The networking security specialist says that March has been the busiest month on record for hacktivist attacks, with March 3 seeing an attack on Korean e-commerce and government sites, followed by an attack on Wordpress.com a day later.
Then, on March 6, the firm says it saw a major attack on the French government's G20 site, followed by two attacks on March 9, respectively, on the Codero managed hosting provider, disrupting Twitter, and Operation Payback from the Anonymous group.
Operation Payback, says Radware, kicked off against BMI.com and involved calls for sustained and disabling attacks from members of the WikiLeaks-inspired hacktivist group.
"These attacks have prompted the Financial Services - Information Security Advisory Council (FS-ISAC) to issue an advisory warning all financial service member companies of a possible denial-of-service attack", says Radware.
According to the networking firm, the organisation's CERT has identified as being at high risk of DDoS attacks: large financial institutions such as banks, together with service providers, government financial regulatory entities, non-affiliated technology infrastructures and critical infrastructure providers – e.g., electric and gas – plus ISPs and national power grid providers.
In order to defend against DDoS attacks, Radware recommends that IT security professionals architect their network perimeter for attack mitigation.
This is achieved, says the company, by taking a security-in-depth approach to fully prepare for attacks and employing an anti-DDoS security strategy to alert to – and mitigate – all attack traffic.
In addition to basic IPS and firewall protection, high-risk firms should also deploy a multi-faceted security solution to ensure the successful mitigation of known and unknown attacks.
Finally, Radware recommends that firms be prepared for a counter-attack by devising a plan that includes the deployment of skilled technicians.