More than one-third of distributed denial-of-service attacks in 2023 were aimed at the financial services industry, which surpassed the video game sector as the most frequent target for attacks, the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center and cloud service provider Akamai said in a new report. The authors examined DDoS attacks worldwide and determined that financial services companies were the targets in nearly 36% of cases. In the Americas, the financial services sector accounted for 28% of DDoS attacks.
Many DDoS attacks are motivated by ideology and frequently attack powerful organizations, such as big commercial banks, public institutions, military facilities and government agencies, according to the report. The authors also observed a change in attack patterns over the course of the year, including more attacks on applications and web pages.