Denmark's central bank and seven private banks, including Jyske Bank and Sydbank, have been hit by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that disrupted their operations this week.
According to Reuters, a spokesperson for the central bank said its website was working normally on Tuesday afternoon. The attack, which also affected IT financial industry solutions developer Bankdata, did not reportedly impact the bank's other systems or day-to-day operations.
However, it impacted access to the websites of the aforementioned private banks, which was briefly restricted on Tuesday after the DDoS attack on Bankdata.
"The recent DDoS attack on Denmark's central bank and an IT partner once again proves that the financial services industry is a prime target for cyber-criminals," said Rick McElroy, principal cybersecurity strategist at VMware.
"Our data shows nearly two out of three financial institutions have experienced an increase in destructive attacks aimed at destroying data and dismantling subnets in this sector."
At the same time, the security expert added the main motive of the attack on Denmark's banking industry appears to be disruption – impacting daily operations for the businesses and society at large.
"As the financial industry continues to be at a heightened risk of attacks ranging from DDoS to ransomware to island hopping, these institutions plan to increase their cybersecurity budget by upwards of 30%."
Amit Sharma, a security engineer at Synopsys Software Integrity Group, echoed McElroy's point, adding that it is impossible to prevent DDoS attacks without proper defense.
"The implementation of professional solutions can be one way forward but so is keeping an eye on the traffic that you own. Trend analysis of the traffic patterns, characteristics and tendencies of shifts can be another proactive way to be cautious," Sharma told Infosecurity.
"It is crucial that organizations also have a backup plan or plan B in their defense strategy, in case of an incident, to restore their applications back in working order."
The attack on Denmark's central bank and IT partner comes at a time of substantial increase in DDoS attacks against organizations worldwide.