A new study, conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of security firm Corero, reveals that 64% of financial institutions suffered at least one distributed denial-of-service attack in 2012.
The report's data shows that of the 650 IT and IT security professionals surveyed, 78% believe that DDOS attacks will continue or increase in 2013.
Even more worrying is the fact that almost half of the respondents – working in 351 banks around the world – revealed that they had been hit by more than one attack.
On the other hand, many online businesses still protect their infrastructure with traditional security systems, such as firewalls.
“The belief that traditional perimeter security technologies like firewalls are able to protect financial institutions and organizations from DDoS attacks gives a false sense of security,” explains Marty Meyer, president of Corero.
“Many organizations believe that traditional firewalls can provide protection against DDoS attacks and zero-day exploits, but in reality they do not prevent attacks,” Meyer added.
“Businesses should add a First Line of Defense that can provide protection and be able to remove all the “noise” at the perimeter before it reaches the network, so that firewalls are sufficient.”
Cyberattacks pose a risk to the banking sector, not only because their systems become inaccessible to their customers, but also because, in some cases, DDOS attacks are used as a pretext for fraud.
