Hardening the DDoS Protection of an Israeli Bank

Background

The bank is one of Israel’s leading financial groups, involved in investment banking, trust services and portfolio management, as well as operating over 150 retail branches. Known for its advanced cybersecurity methods, the bank has a large security team that includes IT architects and research personnel, in addition to the more traditional SOC/NOC and network teams.

The Challenge

Israeli banks regularly suffer from cyberattacks. In response, the bank was looking to strengthen its DDoS protection posture and proactively searched for external experts to lead the process. Upon receiving recommendations from another financial institution, the bank selected Red Button.

Prior to our consultation, the bank had already implemented several DDoS mitigation mechanisms. While the existing architecture provided sufficient protection in previous years, the bank’s security team wanted to ensure it was fortified against larger volumetric attacks going into the future.

The Solution

Audit and Architecture Optimization

After carefully auditing the existing protection architecture, our team recommended re-vamping the bank’s DDoS defense, offering two architecture options, and moving key protection components to the cloud. Following extensive discussion, the bank selected one of the recommended options. Because of its nature and how it redistributes traffic, CDN provided a perfect solution, helping the bank ensure that an attack would not reach the origin server and render the bank’s site unavailable.

Knowledge Transfer

Although training and skill improvement were not among the formal deliverables, our consulting included ongoing knowledge transfer. This increased the DDoS expertise of the bank’s security team, making them much more knowledgeable and effective in their interactions with solution vendors.

Vendor Selection

We provided the bank with a vendor shortlist that best suited the selected DDoS protection topology. At this point, our team assisted the bank again with an extensive, formal POC process. Our team helped evaluate the vendors based on a detailed template, with over 80 evaluation criteria, and conducted testing that involved a controlled DDoS attack.

Configuration Optimization

Following the bank’s selection of a vendor, our team provided a detailed recommendation for the security configuration of the selected DDoS protection software.

As a result of the DDoS hardening project, the bank’s ability to withstand sophisticated attacks (as evident from its DDoS Resiliency Score) increased dramatically.