AI‑Fueled DDoS Attacks Raise Stakes for Mid‑Market Manufacturers and Industrial Operators – Corero - August 17, 2025
The rise of artificial intelligence is transforming the nature of distributed denial‑of‑service (DDoS) attacks, creating a new level of urgency for mid‑market manufacturers and industrial operators to strengthen their cyber defenses. According to Michael Honeycutt, who leads product marketing at Corero Network Security, the latest wave of AI‑assisted DDoS activity is faster, more adaptive, and more accessible to would-be attackers than ever before. It is forcing organizations to rethink the way they secure both information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) networks.
“Attackers can now spin up and scale an operation in minutes,” Honeycutt said in an interview following the Belden Innovation Awards, where Corero was named one of the top three finalists for innovation in industrial operations. “At the same time, organizations — especially in the mid‑market — are looking for effective protection that is proactive, automated, and doesn’t require a dedicated security operations center to manage.”
It is a problem statement that reflects a broader industry challenge: as ransomware and other forms of cyber extortion grab headlines, DDoS attacks remain a persistent, but often underestimated threat. In many cases, they are used in combination with other attack vectors, acting as a diversion while bad actors attempt more targeted intrusions.
“It’s not just the volume anymore,” Honeycutt explained. “These attacks are becoming more sophisticated, targeting latency-sensitive environments, such as industrial control systems or AI‑driven applications, where even a second of disruption can bring operations to a halt.”
This latency factor is driving defenders to push protection closer to the source of the traffic. For organizations running latency‑sensitive applications, that often means deploying on‑premises solutions capable of operating in real time with virtually no performance impact. However, not every environment shares the same operational profile.
“Workloads with greater tolerance for delay, or those distributed across multiple geographies, may benefit from a hybrid approach that blends on‑premises equipment with managed services and cloud‑based traffic scrubbing,” said Honeycutt.
The key is recognizing that DDoS defense is not a one‑size‑fits‑all proposition: each operational scenario demands a response model that aligns protection with the performance, availability, and resiliency requirements of the business.
That is why, when planning DDoS defenses, it’s important to choose solutions that adapt to existing architectures rather than forcing costly or disruptive redesigns. “Topology shouldn’t matter. Whether deployed in‑line, out‑of‑band, or on existing network equipment such as routers, the objective should be to stop malicious traffic before it disrupts operations — without creating barriers to the way your business already works,” he stated
Mid‑Market Vulnerabilities
Mid‑market manufacturers and industrial organizations are especially vulnerable because they often fail to fully optimize the junction between their IT and OT operations — leaving exploitable gaps in visibility and control. Large enterprises typically have dedicated CISOs, 24/7 security teams, and advanced monitoring capabilities. Mid‑market manufacturers, by contrast, often operate with limited in‑house security expertise and smaller budgets. This makes them appealing to adversaries who know that even a modest DDoS campaign can disrupt production and trigger costly downtime.
To address this gap, suggests Honeycutt, organizations should consider adopting a managed‑service model that reduces the operational burden on internal teams. This approach can range from having a trusted provider manage protection end‑to‑end, to integrating that provider’s capabilities into an existing security dashboard through APIs. Before full deployment, it’s wise to run a proof‑of‑concept phase to analyze traffic patterns, begin mitigating threats in advance, and refine defenses over time as the threat landscape evolves.
For affordability, mid-market organizations should explore flexible procurement models that convert what would normally be a capital‑intensive investment into an operating expense. “A subscription‑based approach can make enterprise‑grade protection attainable for smaller organizations by eliminating large upfront costs and spreading the investment over time,” he says.
Intelligent Traffic Analysis and Zero‑Trust Admission
One of the critical defenses against modern DDoS threats is the ability to analyze traffic behavior — not just signatures — and respond dynamically. To this end, explained Honeycutt, Corero uses AI both to detect anomalies and to share intelligence across its network so that an attack identified in one environment can trigger protections elsewhere.
That capability extends to bridging the gap between IT and OT networks. Honeycutt pointed to zero‑trust admission controls that can learn normal access patterns for both human users and machine‑to‑machine communications. “We know that OT devices often run on legacy software and can be sensitive to patches,” he said. “By sitting out‑of‑band and logging permitted behaviors, we can spot and block anomalies before they reach critical systems — without adding latency.”
In industrial settings, this means modeling acceptable behavior patterns for sensors, controllers, and other shop‑floor devices, then blocking unusual traffic that might indicate a compromised endpoint.
Beyond the WAF
Many organizations in the mid-market size segment assume that web application firewalls (WAF) are enough to defend against DDoS attacks. Honeycutt cautions against that assumption. “A WAF is a great tool, but it’s not a purpose‑built anti‑DDoS solution,” he said. “It can be overwhelmed by traffic volume, and it requires tuning and dedicated support. That is why it is important to put measures in place that stop malicious traffic at the edge before it hits the WAF, so your applications aren’t bogged down.”
By filtering traffic at the perimeter and applying AI‑driven allow‑list generation, Corero reduces the load on downstream systems and helps prevent the kind of resource exhaustion that can cripple both web‑facing services and internal applications.
Business Value and Implementation Drivers
Industry analysts report that DDoS attack volumes are growing by double digits year over year, while attack patterns are becoming harder to detect. Small‑scale, short‑duration attacks that “fly under the radar” are increasingly common — and can be just as disruptive to industrial processes as large‑scale events.
Corero’s go‑to‑market approach combines technology with service flexibility. Customers can manage their own deployment or rely on Corero’s managed service team. Integration with existing monitoring platforms via APIs allows organizations to maintain a single pane of glass for visibility.
The company works through managed service providers (MSPs) and alliances with network operators, equipment vendors, and cloud providers to embed its capabilities in broader solutions. That interoperability, Honeycutt said, is key to lowering barriers to adoption of effective DDoS protection.
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