DDoS attacks are designed to interrupt customer transactions and stop business operations, impacting consumers' trust in the financial system. An FS-ISAC and Akamai analysis of 2024 DDoS attacks in the financial sector discovered that attackers are becoming more sophisticated, precise, and focused on financial firms' infrastructure - and that DDoS attacks are an increasingly powerful threat. In 2024, one attack on multiple banks led to outages lasting several days.
The findings have been synthesized into a new joint report to strengthen the sector's resilience to DDoS attacks - From Nuisance to Strategic Threat: DDoS Attacks Against the Financial Sector.
The report features a newly developed DDoS Maturity Model - which lists the characteristics, defense capabilities, and risks associated with DDoS attacks according to five stages of cyber maturity. Engineered for financial institutions at any stage, the Model helps institutions identify areas for improvement, increase their resilience, and prioritize their investments.
There will be a more technical report geared toward practitioners available only to FS-ISAC members soon.
We have also created a one page executive summary to help with reporting on DDoS to senior leadership and boards.
Akamai is the founding participant of FS-ISAC’s Critical Providers Program, launched in 2022 to bolster the financial sector’s supply chain security.