The Cyber-Attacks Continue – Capital One the Latest Victim

True to their word, the cyber-terrorists have not stopped their attacks on major U.S. financial institutions. Capital One, a leading credit card provider, is one of the latest targets of the increasingly widespread attacks.

According to reports, Capital One was one of the latest victims of the DDoS attacks that have been plaguing financial websites across the nation. While no single person has been linked to the attacks, the cyber-terrorists behind the attacks have been very clear in who their targets will be. They stated that they would be targeting Capital One, and they kept true to their word. Unfortunately, even with the warnings in place, the attacks they are launching use sophisticated techniques that have been flooding Websites with encrypted data that is able to bypass the firewalls of the targets as well as the other security mechanisms that the financial institutions have in place.

While the targets of the attacks insist that customers’ financial information is not at risk, it doesn’t take away from the fact that customers are faced with the frustrating experience of not being able to access websites and vital online resources.

When the Capital One site was experiencing difficulties, Pam Girardo, a spokeswoman for Capital One, stated “We are working to restore all online service as soon as possible.” Regardless of Capital One’s efforts to thwart the attack and restore services, the online community was abuzz as consumers were becoming increasingly frustrated. One Twitter member, Brian Bagel, tweeted “Your website is down once again. Unavailable all week despite your claims to the contrary. “ Another Twitter member who goes by the handle Cfmceroz stated, “Capital One website still down 24 hours later. Jihadis still winning in Cap1 vs Iran.”

When Companies Refuse to Be Transparent

It appears that what is frustrating Capital One customers is that the financial institution is insisting that services are back up and running, while customers are obviously still experiencing issues. Not communicating is one thing. Turning a blind eye to the fact that there is still indeed a problem is something else entirely and customers aren’t happy about the way Capital One is addressing the situation.

This just goes to show you, honesty means everything when it comes to reputation and customer satisfaction. While Capital One may not be to blame for the attack or the effects of it, customers seem to feel that they are to blame for not communicating properly.

A Lesson Learned

Remember, if Alertra notifies you that your website is down, you need to communicate with your customers regarding the reasons for the outage. Transparency is everything and we have seen in the past weeks that the way a website handles their communication has a significant impact on how customers feel about a website outage. If you want to keep your customers happy, keep in contact with them. Use social media to your advantage. The best way to avoid customers tweeting their frustrations about your site is to tweet about the situation and keep them in the loop.