In the past weeks, the US banking industry has been a target for a growing number of cyber attacks. While cyber attacks are nothing new for the industry, the scale and coordination of the recent events are somewhat unprecedented, putting banks on the defensive while customers also worry the impact of the attacks. To date, none of the recent attacks have jeopardized customer data, instead only causing an inconvenience as many bank websites and ATM networks have been slow or brought down all together. That may change though, and we know in the digital world consumers are increasingly concerned of their data privacy.
The attacks have targeted most of the nation’s largest banks, hitting JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Citigroup (NYSE: C), and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). Wells Fargo is the latest to be hit. About 220 customers of the nation’s fourth-biggest bank by assets filed complaints Tuesday with sitedown.com, a website that tracks outages. The banks recognize the important of data security, and typically have some of the best defenses against potential attacks. So, although the recent wave hasn’t cause a loss in sensitive customer information, it remains a reminder that security information is critical and the banks must remain vigilant in protecting customer data.
Sitedown.com received 330 complaints about the Bank of America outage and nearly 1,000 complaints about J.P. Morgan’s problems over the past week. Jeff Herdell, who runs sitedown.com, said the Wells Fargo complaints were significant because the company rarely experiences problems with its websites. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman confirmed that some customers were having problems logging in on Tuesday but said the San Francisco-based company was working to resolve the issue. She added that the outage was a systems problem and that no customer-account information was compromised. While there may be some solace in that, the purpose and scope of the attacks remain a cause for concern.
“The amount of bandwidth that is flooding the websites is very large, much larger than in other attacks, and in a sense unprecedented,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief executive of CrowdStrike, a private security firm investigating the attacks. A puzzle for investigators is who is behind the attacks. A group called the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has claimed responsibility for the attacks in online posts as retaliation for what it calls an anti-Muslim film.
The scope of the disruption has raised eyebrows, and leads to concern this may be a predecessor of things to come.
