news
APIs are now
target of choice
for cybercriminals
attacking
financial services
organisations
kamai Technologies has
A
published the Akamai 2020
State of the Internet / Security:
Financial Services – Hostile Takeover
Attempts report. The research findings
reveal that from May 2019 and
continuing on until the end of the year,
there was a dramatic shift by criminals
who started targeting APIs in an effort
to bypass security controls. According
to data from Akamai, up to 75% of all
credential abuse attacks against the
financial services industry targeted
APIs directly.
According to the report’s findings, from
December 2017 through November
2019, Akamai observed 85,422,079,109
credential abuse attacks. Nearly 20%,
or 16,557,875,875, were against
hostnames that were clearly identified
as API endpoints. Of these, 473,518,955
attacked organisations in the financial
services industry.
But not all attacks were exclusively
API-focused. On August 7, 2019, Akamai
recorded the single largest credential
stuffing attack against a financial
services firm in the company’s history,
consisting of 55,141,782 malicious login
attempts. This attack was a mix of API
targeting and other methodologies.
On August 25, in a separate incident, the
criminals targeted APIs directly, in a run
that consisted of more than 19 million
credential abuse attacks.
“Criminals are getting more creative and
hyper-focused on how they go about
obtaining access to the things they need
to conduct their crimes,” said Steve
Ragan, Akamai Security Researcher
and Principal Author of the State of the
Internet / Security report.
SANS SURVEY SHOWS EVOLUTION OF
CYBER THREAT INTELLIGENCE
survey from SANS Institute
A
has revealed how Cyber
Threat Intelligence (CTI) has
evolved in EMEA.
The SANS 2020 CTI Survey has
reported that CTI has evolved from
small, ad-hoc tasks performed
disparately across an organisation
to, in many cases, robust
programmes with their own staff,
tools and processes that support
the entire organisation.
“In the past three years, we have
seen an increase in the percentage
of respondents choosing to have a
dedicated team over a single
individual responsible for the
entire CTI programme,” said
Robert M Lee, Survey Author
and Instructor at SANS Institute,
a leader in cybersecurity training
and certifications.
Robert M Lee, Survey Author and
Instructor at SANS Institute
In fact, survey results indicate that just
under 50% of respondents’ organisations
have a team dedicated to CTI, up from
41% in 2019. In total, more than 84% of
organisations reported having some kind
of resource focusing on CTI.
While the number of organisations with
dedicated threat intelligence teams is
growing, results also demonstrate a
move towards collaboration, with 61%
reporting that CTI tasks are handled by
a combination of in-house and service
provider teams.
“We continue to see an emphasis on
partnering with others, whether through
a paid service provider relationship or
through information-sharing groups or
programmes,” said Lee. “Collaboration
within organisations is also on the
rise, with many respondents reporting
that their CTI teams are part of a coordinated
effort across the organisation.”
6 Issue 24 | www.intelligentciso.com