NEWS
Akamai research finds cyberattacks on European financial services more than doubled in 2023
The new report , The High Stakes of Innovation : Attack Trends in Financial Services , finds that financial services are the third-most attacked vector in the Europe , Middle East and Africa ( EMEA ) region , with approximately 1 billion web application and API attacks , which represents a significant 119 % year-over-year increase when comparing Q2 2022 with Q2 2023 .
In EMEA , insurance is by far the most attacked sub-vertical of financial services with 54.5 % of all web attacks , which represents a 68 % increase year over year . Insurance companies hold a huge amount of personally identifiable information , which makes them an attractive target for cybercriminals in contrast with other financial services organisations that hold mostly financial data .
Akamai Technologies , a cloud company that powers and protects life online , has released a new State of the Internet report that explores existing and emerging cyberattacks against the financial services industry .
The report also finds that as a region , EMEA experienced the most DDoS attack events ( 63.5 % of attacks worldwide ), which is nearly double the number in North America , the next top region ( 32.6 %). The UK tops the list in EMEA at 29.2 % of DDoS attack events , followed by Germany at 15.1 %. Akamai surmises that the attacks on the European banks that are allies of Ukraine are financially and politically motivated by Russia ’ s continued war in Ukraine and are the primary reason for the increase in attack events in EMEA .
Cyxtera launches AI + Quantum Center of Excellence to empower customers
Cyxtera , a global leader in data centre colocation , interconnection services and digital infrastructure , has announced the launch of its new AI + Quantum Center of Excellence ( COE ) in the company ’ s LHR3 data centre in Reading , UK .
Cyxtera designed its COE to serve as a testing and activation hub for companies exploring how to leverage AI and Quantum Computing in their environments . By providing access to a wide breadth of bestof-breed technology providers and strategic partners – as well as the ability to knit them together via its Digital Exchange network fabric – Cyxtera has established a secure testing lab for AI and Quantum workloads .
“ The demand for AI and Quantum capabilities continues to grow , but many companies don ’ t know where to start , are overwhelmed by vendor options and lack internal resources to properly tackle these initiatives ,” said Holland Barry ,
Senior Vice President and Field Chief Technology Officer at Cyxtera . “ Our vision for the COE is to provide a controlled lab environment where our customers can explore , test and validate technologies alongside our team and experts from our partner organisations , to help define and realise benefits from their AI and Quantum strategies .”
Founding partners of Cyxtera ’ s COE include Fujitsu , Boston Limited , Oxford Quantum Circuits ( OQC ), SECQAI , Amulet Hotkey and Asperitas .
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