Chase Bank Website Goes Down Yet Again

We exist in a day and age where we live and work on the Web. Everything from communicating with family and friends to paying bills is done via a connection to the Internet. In a perfect world, nothing would interfere with our ability to perform our daily Internet tasks. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world. On Friday of last week, Chase customers were once again reminded of this fact.

Online Banking Is Supposed to Be Convenient

Those who bank online are well aware of the cyber-attacks that have been making online banking less convenient than it was meant to be. We are all supposed to be able to log into our accounts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to look at our account balances, pay bills and perform other financial tasks. Unfortunately that 24 hour a day, 7 day a week promise that banks have made to us has been broken time and time again. As consumers have to come rely heavily upon the online availability of their financial accounts, cyber-terrorists have come to learn that the best way to make online banking irritating and inconvenient is to take access to those accounts away.

Why Isn’t History Teaching Lessons?

You’d think that the banks would be prepared for the cyber-attacks that have been taking financial websites down for months now. The initial attacks began last September. Unfortunately the major financial institutions that have been the target of such attacks haven’t been preparing properly to mitigate the damage that the attacks can cause – and they can’t claim that they don’t know when the attacks are coming.

The hacktivist group Algassam Cyberfighters took responsibility for the latest assaults. The reason for the attack? A posting of a movie trailer on YouTube that the group found to be offensive to Muslims. The group said that the attacks would stop in January after someone took down one of the videos; however, they sent an email last Tuesday saying that the attacks would resume if the other copies of the video were not taken down. The copies didn’t come down and the attacks resumed. Chase customers felt the hit as they were unable to bank online for a stretch that lasted hours last Friday.

Can Anything Be Done?

It’s true that nothing can be done to stop a DDoS attack, but there are things that can be done to mitigate the damage that such attacks can cause. The banks are usually given plenty of notice that the attacks will occur. Had Chase started preparing on Tuesday (the day the attacks were announced) for the attack that occurred on Friday, the site shouldn’t have been down for more than an hour and customers shouldn’t have been so inconvenienced when the attack occurred. The problem, it seems, is that the banks aren’t being proactive enough or taking these attacks seriously.

If banks want to keep customers happy, they need to be proactive when it comes to the cyber-attacks that are interfering with online account access. The banks need to store critical information in a safe place that has multiple layers of security. When the attacks occur, the banks should be able to retrieve the data and divert traffic. In addition, the banks should be investing in hiring the right personnel – employees who can fight the attacks. After all, the banks are at war whether they realize it or not and a good defense starts with a great offense. Having personnel on staff that can proactively fight such attacks can go a long way in keeping the bank websites up and running, providing seamless availability to customers.

While we can’t stop the cyber-terrorists from launching the attacks that they have been launching for months, banks can take measures to keep their sites up and running. The question is, when will they start taking these attacks seriously and put the proper measures into place?