The Ponemon Institute conducted the study on behalf of Corero

Jan 23, 2013 23:01 GMT  ·  By
Ponemon Institute has conducted a study on the DDOS attacks launched against banks
   Ponemon Institute has conducted a study on the DDOS attacks launched against banks

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 the past year.

The figures from the report show that of the 650 IT and IT security practitioners who took part in the survey, 78% believe that DDOS attacks will continue or increase in 2013.

Even more worrying is the fact that almost half of the respondents – working at 351 banks around the world – revealed that they had been hit by more than one attack.

On the other hand, many organizations still protect their infrastructures with traditional security systems, such as firewalls.

“The belief that traditional perimeter security technologies such as firewalls are able to protect against today’s DDoS attacks is lulling not only financial institutions but organizations across every sector into a false sense of security,” explained Marty Meyer, president of Corero.

“Many Organizations assume traditional firewalls can provide protection against DDoS and Zero-Day exploits at the perimeter, yet this is not what they were designed to do and therefore attacks are still getting through,” Meyer added.

“Organizations need to add First Line of Defense solutions that can provide this protection and are able to remove all of the ‘noise’ at the perimeter before it hits the network so that firewalls and servers can optimally work on the functions they were originally designed for.”

As many bank customers from the US will tell you, DDOS attacks can be a serious issue. Such cyberattacks represent a risk to the banking sector not only because their systems become inaccessible for customers, but also because, in some cases, DDOS attacks are used as a cover-up for fraud.

“When such an attack occurs, the time and efforts of IT staff are devoted to dealing with the problem instead of managing other IT operational and security priorities. This leaves financial institutions open to more dangerous attacks that further compromise their infrastructure,” Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, noted.

The complete report is available here.