March was a heavy month for Hacktivist Attacks, with the most occurrences on record.

As a result, the Financial Services – Information Security Advisory Council (FS-ISAC) has issued a warning to all financial service member companies of a possible Denial-of-Service attack, and has republished the national CERT guidance in anticipation and preparation.

Large financial institutions – including banks, service providers, government financial regulatory entities, non-affiliated technology infrastructures and critical infrastructure are identified as being at high risk.

So far in March, the industry has seen a DDoS attack on Korean e-Commerce and government institutions; a DDoS attack on Wordpress.com; an attack on the French government’s interest in the G20; a DDoS attack on Codero managed hosting provider – which disrupted Twitter; and BMI.com witnessed an attack from group Anonymous, who launched ‘Operation Payback’ against them and called for sustained and disabling attacks from its members.

As a result, application delivery solutions provider Radware has provided a checklist for the next potential targets.

A security-in-depth approach to fully prepare for attacks should be deployed, as well as complementary security technologies. Skilled technicians should also be included to prepare in the event of an attack, ensuring the tools, alerts, correlation and mitigation are handled properly.

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