South African Banks resilient in the face of latest DDoS attacks

SABRIC, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre, on behalf of the banking industry can confirm that as of Wednesday, the 23^rd of October 2019, the banking industry has been hit by a wave of ransom driven Distributed Denial of Service attacks, targeting various public facing services across multiple banks.

These attacks started with a ransom note which was delivered via email to both unattended as well as staff email addresses, all of which were publicly available. Threat intelligence which has surfaced has revealed that this is a multi-jurisdictional attack with entities from several countries being targeted and should therefore not be viewed as a targeted attack on South African companies only.

We must emphasise that DDoS attacks like this one do not involve hacking or a data breach and therefore no customer data is at risk. It does however, involve increased traffic on networks necessary to access public facing services. This may cause minor disruptions.

Robust defensive strategies have been invoked across the industry and we are confident that customer impact will be kept to a minimum.

“Despite our Banks preparedness and resilience, we will continue to monitor this situation very closely and respond as required,” says SABRIC acting CEO, Susan Potgieter.

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For more information go to www.sabric.co.za

To arrange for interviews with SABRIC acting CEO, Susan Potgieter, contact:Louise van der MerweTel: +27 11 847 3134Email: Louiset@sabric.co.za