MIDDLE EAST: Prolexic, the global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services, today announced that Mashreq, one of the leading financial institutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), will be supported by Prolexic's DDoS detection and DDoS protection services in the event that attacks are directed against its web site.
Since 1967, Mashreq has provided banking and financial services to millions of customers and businesses. With a growing retail presence in the region, including Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain as well as representative offices worldwide, awareness of the bank has increased along with the likelihood of DDoS attacks.
Mashreq has relied on the DDoS detection and DDoS protection services of its own security infrastructure, however, with DDoS attacks against financial institutions becoming larger and more intense, the bank took a proactive step to add more robust DDoS protection. Now, as a Prolexic client, when attacks become too large or complex to handle internally, it can draw upon Prolexic's industry-leading 500 Gbps cloud-based mitigation platform and technicians based at the company's Security Operations Center.
"Hosting providers, even with large networks and dedicated internal resources, are no match for today's complex application layer or high packet-per-second attacks", said Neal Quinn, chief operating officer at Prolexic. "Having additional DDoS defenses in place is critical for protecting hosted sites in the banking and financial services sector in light of the recent surge of attacks on this industry."
DDoS Attacks on Financial Services Sector Increases in Q1 2012
According to the Prolexic Global Attack Report Q1 2012 compiled by the Prolexic Security and Engineering Response Team (PLXsert), financial services sites were hard hit by DDoS attacks in Q1 2012. During Q4 2011, over 168 trillion bits of data and 14 billion packets of malicious traffic were identified as targeting financial services clients. In Q1 2012, 5.7 quadrillion bits of data and 1.1 trillion malicious packets were identified and successfully mitigated, representing a 3,000% increase in malicious packet traffic over Q4 2011.
"Prolexic has observed that DDoS attackers are taking a more direct strategy and focusing on specific targets such as financial services," Quinn said. "Mashreq's adoption of Prolexic's DDoS protection services illustrates how financial services firms can be proactive against online threats."
Recent DDoS attacks on banks in the UAE illustrate the urgency for online financial services firms and their hosting providers to be well prepared with DDoS defenses. Recently, both domestic and global sites of UAE banks were hit with an application layer (Layer 7) attack of 10 Mbps for approximately 10 days, resulting in intermittent site performance issues.
David Horton, Head of Strategy at Mashreq, said, "Given the recent increase in DDoS attacks against banks locally and globally, Mashreq engaged Prolexic as a protective measure for attacks that our internal resources may not be equipped to handle. Recently recognized as 'The Best Regional Retail Bank", Mashreq has market leading online and mobile banking solutions for its customers, so protecting these services against disruption is of paramount importance to us. The age old advice certainly applies here - prepare for the worst and hope for the best."
A complimentary copy of the Prolexic Global Attack Report Q1 2012 can be downloaded from www.prolexic.com/attackreports.
About FVC
FVC is the authorized Value Added Distributor (VAD) for Prolexic for the Middle East and North Africa. With dedicated offices in United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and an expanded presence in Nigeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Algeria, FVC works through its growing network of channel partners in over 45 countries across the region.
With new technologies and solutions driving the pace of change of businesses in the region, FVC has built a successful business by drawing on the best of global solutions. Uniquely in the region, its combination of full support for its channel partners and market-leading solutions from emerging technologies provides both FVC's partners and their customers with the full confidence to invest in integrated next-generation IT and networking solutions. These include Unified Communications, Information Security, Cloud Computing, and Application Delivery.
To learn more, visit FVC at www.fvc.com
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About Prolexic
Prolexic is the world's largest, most trusted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation provider. Able to absorb the largest and most complex attacks ever launched, Prolexic restores mission-critical Internet-facing infrastructures for global enterprises and government agencies within minutes. Ten of the world's largest banks and the leading companies in e-Commerce, SaaS, payment processing, travel/hospitality, gaming and other at-risk industries rely on Prolexic to protect their businesses. Founded in 2003 as the world's first in- the-cloud DDoS mitigation platform, Prolexic is headquartered in Hollywood, Florida and has scrubbing centers located in the Americas, Europe and Asia. To learn more about how Prolexic can stop DDoS attacks and protect your business, please visit www.prolexic.com, follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ or follow @Prolexic on Twitter.
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© Press Release 2012
