WASHINGTON – The ReymannGroup today released a thought leadership paper that sizes up the immediate threat of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on banks and other financial institutions. The paper states that real-time cyberattacks are a true and current menace and that the perpetrators are no longer just looking for hacker’s bragging rights – they are intent on fraud, theft and extortion.
The whitepaper, “DDoS Threatens Financial Institutions – Get Prepared,” written by ReymannGroup Senior Technology Risk Consultant Susan Orr, explains the threat of DDoS – where a criminal manipulates an “army” of computers belonging to unsuspecting people to “flame” a targeted system until it shuts down – and offers advice on how to prevent these kinds of attacks.
“DDoS attacks are too easy to execute, and no amount of redundancy can prevent a network shutdown if an unprotected network is targeted,” said Orr. “The damage these attacks can do to a bank’s privacy, stability and reputation, if its networks suddenly go down or become inaccessible to employees and clients, is nothing short of catastrophic.”
The whitepaper states the FBI’s interest in real-time cybercrime attacks is right behind terrorism and espionage in priority. DDoS attacks have already happened to numerous payment gateway companies and financial institutions such as Authorize.net, PSIGateway, WorldPay, 2Checkout and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
ReymannGroup CEO Paul Reymann, co-author of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) data protection regulation, says a proactive DDoS risk mitigation strategy is not just best practices – it’s mandated.
“Clearly the intent of existing laws and rules such as Sarbanes-Oxley and GLBA is to insure against known external threats to an organization’s network. DDoS attacks are a real threat and financial institutions must have prevention plans in place,” said Reymann.
Complimentary copies of the whitepaper are available on the ReymannGroup website at http://www.reymanngroup.com/DOS_Paper_Final.pdf.
