Article Summary: Akamai, a cloud service for optimizing and securing online content, recently prevented a large DDos attack on a U.S. financial company. This attack happened on September 5th 2023 and was directed to one of the largest and most influential U.S. finance institutions. "Cybercriminals used a combination of ACK, PUSH, RESET, and SYN flood attack vectors, peaking at 633.7 gigabits per second (Gbps) and 55.1 million packets per second (Mpps)" (Sparling & Rath, 2023). The attack lasted for about 2 minutes and was proactively mitigated with its cyber defense strategies. Interestingly, the article graphically shows where and and how much traffic originated vs the targeted attack. The cloud security company stated that historically financial institutions are not the majority of targeted DDoS attacks and that since 2021 there has been an increasing amount of attacks that are now targeting financial institutions. Missing Info: Some missing information that is included is the actual U.S. financial institution that was affected. Also like many attacks, the cybercriminals/affiliated group are unknown. Knowing the group or attacker may help provide some insight and more information like motive, preferred attack vectors, timing of attacks, resources, and more. Another critical missing piece of info is the actual cyber defense strategies that help mitigate the attack. The details in defense in depth and other security fundamentals can provide insights on the level of security required to protect against these kinds of attacks. Incentives: There are many reasons as to why an organization is not excited to share these types of attacks. Some reasons include: Damage to reputation, loss of profit and or partnerships, compliance issues, and negative attention from consumers or new agencies. Although the cloud security companies are excited to share about there proactive actions, I am sure the organizations they protect would rather not bloat about any successful attacks. References Sparling, C., & Rath, S. (2023, September 8). Akamai prevents the largest ddos attack on a U.S. financial
company ... Akamai. https://www.akamai.com/blog/security/akamai-prevents- the-largest-ddos-attack-on-a-us-financial-company less