Analytics firm Neustar said that while the percentage is significantly lower than that experienced by their US equivalents it is still fairly high. More than 22 percent of the 381 organisations participating in the annual trends study reported DDoS attacks, compared to 35 percent experiencing the same in a separate study carried out among US firms in 2012.

Neustar set out to measure revenue 'risk per hour' which is a measure of what it might cost a business in a particular sector to experience DdoS downtime. They found that the majority of organisations reckoned this at less than £1,000 ($1,500) per hour.

Most of the rest put it somewhere between £1,000 and £10,000 although one in four financial services firms put the number at £100,000 per hour. This cost included brand damage and unexpected customer service calls.