By Sam | January 16, 2019

How Can a Credit Union Mitigate DDoS Attacks?

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are a real threat to financial institutions. How can you keep your credit union safe from DDoS attacks?

Let’s just take a quick step back to make sure we understand how DDoS attacks work. To do so we’ll talk a little about—yup, you guessed it—honey bees. (Okay, maybe that wasn’t your guess, but you get the benefit of the doubt here.)

Denial of Service vs the European Honey Bee

Traditional honey bees are European honey bees. They’re pretty mellow creatures, and they tend not to sting humans often because humans rarely give them cause. They’re into pollinating, propagating, and protecting their hive, mostly. In the case that they do attack, it’s often a half-hearted, solo attempt.

Defending yourself against a single or a couple defensively-minded European honey bees is not big deal. You can identify the threat and quickly contain, quash, or avoid it.

Similarly, against a Denial of Service (DoS) attack on your network or security devices, you can quickly find the source of the attack and block or quarantine it. The solution is simple and straightforward. A DoS attack can set you back, but it’s easy to get caught up.

Distributed Denial of Service vs the Africanized Honey Bee

Now imagine that instead of one or two frustrated bees, there’s a swarm of angry, defensive bees. Individually they’re no stronger than a regular European honey bee; however, in large numbers, their coordinated strikes can be deadly. You can’t can’t contain a swarm.

DDoS attacks work on the same principle. Instead of attacking from a central location, DDoS attacks are decentralized and coordinated attacks on your network. With thousands—or hundreds of thousands—of computers taxing the bandwidth and resources of a network, DDoS attacks can compromise or shut down websites and services for long periods of time.

How Can a Credit Union Stay Safe?

To stay safe from bees, just make sure no large, unusually-aggressive hives set up shop in your credit union. For dealing with DDoS attacks, credit unions have a few common options with varying levels of efficacy.

1. Do Nothing

This is clearly the worst protective choice. Don’t do nothing.

2. Use an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that Includes DDoS Mitigation

Many ISPs provide some level of DDoS protection. It’s worth looking into for the sake of your credit union to discuss what options they have.

3. Hire a Third-Party DDoS Mitigation Service

Third-party DDoS mitigation services employ various techniques to keep your site and services free from interruption and harm. One of the strengths of third-party solutions is that they can analyze the type of traffic coming to your site and take a few actions.

Third-party DDoS mitigation can reroute traffic from the attacked website, remove the taxing and fraudulent requests and visits, and filter only vetted consumers through to the webpage. This reduces the workload on your network and servers so that they can continue addressing the needs of its members. Third party solutions are usually extremely effective.

All in all, DDoS mitigation services are designed to protect your credit union from malicious, coordinated attacks. If you wish to prioritize services for your members, including home banking, then we strongly recommend finding a DDoS mitigation service that works for you.

Oh, and we apologize if we talked too much about bees.

For other great informational blogs, check out the following content:

What to Consider When Choosing a Credit Union Security Consultant

Top 5 Considerations When Picking A Managed Security Provider