DDoS Attacks Up 31% in Q1 2021: Report If pace continues, DDoS attack activity could surpass last year's 10-million attack threshold. Researchers recorded approximately 2.9 million DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2021, marking a 31% increase from the same period in 2020. Netscout's Atlas Security Engineering & Response Team (ASERT) anticipated last year that the high DDoS numbers recorded in 2020 would extend into 2021. Now researchers report all three months of the first quarter surpassed the 900,000-attack mark. If this activity holds, they say, DDoS attack activity is set to exceed the 10-million attack threshold recorded last year. This activity is unusual, the researchers say, as January and February are typically the slowest months for DDoS attacks. In 2021 they observed 972,000 attacks in January alone, beating last May's record for the highest number of attacks seen in one month.