• Survey conducted at the Financial Services Information Security Network event highlights the top security concerns amongst CISOs in the financial services industry
• 32% of CISOs attending the event said that they would be investing in DDoS prevention measures 

Less than a third of financial services CISOs see Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) protection as an investment priority, data from the Network Group Events’ Financial Services Information Security Network shows. The survey, which polls senior information security experts in the financial services industry, found that only 32% would be investing in systems that protect their business from a DDoS attack over the next 12 months.

The data comes amid news that a DDoS attack was used to prevent voters from registering ahead of the EU referendum vote in June 2016. DDoS attacks often involve very little in the way of investment and work by rendering a business’s online service, such as a website, unavailable. This can result in a significant loss of business to a firm, and in some cases hackers also hold the target company to ransom, demanding payment for the denial of service to be lifted.

However, the results are an improvement on last year’s event, when just one in five (20%) network security experts saw DDoS protection measures as an investment priority.

Jake Summerfield, Managing Director, The Network Group Events said: 

“With threats from all directions, new data regulation on the horizon and CISOs continuing to face the long-running problem of convincing company boards to invest in cyber security, information security professionals are having to prioritise their budgets to meet the rising threat of a cyber-attack.

“Despite a spate of recent DDoS attacks, such as Tesco Bank, The Network Group Events data shows that CISOs are having to prioritise other areas of cyber-defence over systems that protect them from DDoS attacks. This is particularly worrying given that these crude forms of cyber-crime are on the rise and in some cases, can act as a Trojan for an even more serious data breach.

“The good news is that more CISOs are investing in measures to combat DDoS attacks. Last year, we found that just one every five CISOs in financial services were prioritising systems that protect companies against a denial of service attack. However, DDoS attacks remain a problem and one that all our financial institutions need to see as not just an IT problem, but a threat to their operations.”

For more information about the Financial Services Information Security Network event, please visit: www.thenetwork-group.com/financial-services-information-security-network