October 26, 2023 at 06:18PM
New data from Lumen Technologies reveals that the banking industry was the most targeted vertical for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in Q3 2023. A single banking customer experienced over 230 DDoS attacks in a single day, but Lumen’s multi-layered DDoS mitigation approach prevented any downtime. The report also highlights a decrease in the total number of attacks in Q3 and the prevalence of programmatic access threats and attacks against authentication in the banking industry.
Key Takeaways from the Meeting Notes:
1. The banking industry was the most targeted vertical for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in Q3 2023, with a significant increase in attacks on September 21, 2023. However, Lumen Technologies’ multi-layered approach to DDoS mitigation prevented any downtime for a banking customer that experienced over 230 DDoS attacks on that day.
2. Lumen’s DDoS mitigation platform utilizes countermeasures at the network level, intelligent routing technology, and Rapid Threat Defense, which blocks DDoS botnet traffic before it reaches the customer’s environment.
3. Attackers attempted a never-before-seen, four-vector combination during the September 21 event, including DNS Amplification, IP Fragmentation, Invalid Packets, and Static Filtering. Lumen’s DDoS mitigation platform successfully recognized and stopped these attacks.
4. The total number of DDoS attacks decreased in Q3 2023, with a quarter-over-quarter decrease of 23% and an annual decrease of 24%.
5. The banking industry also faced the highest percentage of blocked traffic from programmatic access, indicating suspicious and automated attempts to access web applications, which increased by 89% from the previous quarter.
6. The banking sector experienced a significant percentage of “Attacks Against Authentication,” highlighting attempts to gain unauthorized access to financial data.
7. Businesses, especially in the banking sector, should prioritize robust web application and API protection solutions to safeguard their applications and protect financial data.
8. ThreatX, the application protection partner of Lumen, emphasized the importance of bot protection and awareness of industry-specific threats in securing APIs and applications. The prevalence of programmatic access threats and variations in threats across industries necessitate ongoing vigilance and proactive measures to protect applications and APIs.