The study, commissioned by Correro Network Security, of 650 IT and security staff at 351 banks, also revealed that 78% of those surveyed believed that DDoS attacks will continue or significantly increase in 2013.

Almost half of respondents (48%) said their banks had suffered multiple outages from outside assailants in the past 12 months. They stated that along with DDoS attacks, Zero-Day exploits, that expose a previously unknown vulnerability, are considered to be the most severe security threats.

Among the key barriers impacting banks ability to deal with the threat, 50% cited insufficient personnel and expertise and a lack of effective security technology as the most serious concerns, followed by insufficient budget resources.

The findings spotlight the trend for hacktivist groups to proactively target banks, with Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Capital One and others once again in the firing line since the end of 2012.

Despite the recognition that the threat of DDoS attacks is not abating, the survey revealed that banks are still predominately relying on previously deployed traditional technology, in particular firewalls (35%) to protect their organisation from today's sophisticated attacks.

Marty Meyer, president of Corero, says: "Many Organisations assume traditional firewalls can provide protection against DDoS and Zero-Day exploits at the perimeter, yet this is not what they were designed to do and therefore attacks are still getting through. Organisations need to add 'First Line of Defence' solutions that can provide this protection and are able to remove all of the 'noise' at the perimeter before it hits the network so that firewalls and servers can optimally work on the functions they were originally designed for."

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