New Report Finds Increase in DDoS Attacks Targeting the Financial Services Industry

FS-ISAC, the member-driven, not-for-profit organization that advances cybersecurity and resilience in the global financial system, and Akamai Technologies, Inc., the cloud company that powers and protects life online, released new research on the threat that Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks pose to the financial services sector.

The report, titled, The Evolution of DDoS: Return of the Hacktivists, notes that 2022 saw a 22 percent uptick in the volume of DDoS attacks targeting financial firms. This is especially true across Europe, where the attacks increased by 73 percent, and where financial services were the target of 50 percent of all DDoS assaults.

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The Evolution of DDoS: Return of the Hacktivist finds that much of the increase in DDoS attacks is driven by groups that have taken sides in the Russia–Ukraine war or other geopolitical conflicts. This includes organizations such as Killnet, which has targeted the United States and nations throughout Europe.

Other major findings of the report include:

• Taking a cue from ransomware attacks, many DDoS campaigns now include extortion tactics.
• DDoS can serve as a cover for other, potentially more damaging cyber activities such as infiltration of systems and exfiltration of data and malware installation. This means that when cybersecurity teams encounter DDoS, they must also be on the alert for other types of attacks, putting extra strain on already limited resources.
• The evolution of DDoS means that firms must update their risk profiles and mitigation measures accordingly. Far from a low-level annoyance, DDoS should increasingly be considered a key cyber defense challenge. The report discusses several mitigation strategies, including network best practices, cyber hygiene and resilience.
• As more services are moved to the cloud or contracted in an aaS (as-a-Service) model, those services will depend on other supply chain components. Service disruptions anywhere in the supply chain can have a serious impact on an organization’s operation.

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“The continued evolution of DDoS shows that it is far from a solved problem,” said Teresa Walsh, Global Head of Intelligence at FS-ISAC. “Working with our sector’s critical providers like Akamai, who have first-hand knowledge of how DDoS is affecting the financial sector, enables us to arm our members with the understanding and guidance they need to better protect their firms and customers.”

“Though DDoS attacks have been around for some time, we are seeing that they are evolving in new, innovative and aggressive ways,” said Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO at Akamai. “We teamed up with FS-ISAC to produce The Evolution of DDoS: Return of the Hacktivists in an effort to better educate the financial community about the threats of DDoS and to offer some threat trends and best practices for the sector to better combat these attacks.”

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