What is one risk involved with Distributed Denial of Service attacks?

One significant risk associated with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks is prolonged service disruption. In a DDoS attack, multiple systems are used to flood a target system with traffic, overwhelming its resources and causing legitimate users to experience slow performance, interruptions, or an inability to access the service altogether. This disruption can vary in duration, depending on the scale of the attack and the target's defense mechanisms. Prolonged outages can lead to operational challenges, loss of revenue, and damage to the organization’s reputation, as users may seek alternatives if the service is inaccessible for an extended period.

In contrast, increased system performance and enhanced network security are not realistic outcomes of a DDoS attack; rather, these situations would typically be desired goals of IT management. Loss of customer data integrity is a serious concern, but while it can stem from various security issues, it is not a direct risk of a DDoS attack, which primarily focuses on making services unavailable rather than compromising data.