Nordea faces persistent DDoS attacks amid ongoing technical issues in Finland

Recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Nordea have been exceptional, according to Nina Arkilahti, the director responsible for Nordic small and medium-sized enterprise operations. Persistent disruptions have plagued the bank for several weeks, and Arkilahti stated on Wednesday during an interview that the bank is continually facing new and varied attacks.

Technical alterations have also contributed to some of these issues. For instance, on Tuesday, updates and improvements did not proceed as planned, leading to system failures and restarts. “Yesterday was an unfortunate coincidence,” Arkilahti explained.

In a DDoS attack, the perpetrator overwhelms a service with traffic, causing slowdowns or complete outages, though they cannot access confidential data. Arkilahti assured that Nordea has not experienced any data breaches. “At all times, our customers’ accounts, information, and assets have been completely secure.”

The issues have also drawn attention from the government, with the parliamentary banking authority requesting an investigation into Nordea’s online banking problems. Arkilahti expressed regret for the inconvenience and concern caused to customers in recent weeks. Despite the ongoing challenges, she stated that there have been no significant losses of customers due to these problems and maintained that Nordea’s security measures are on par with those of other banks.

Most cyberattacks on various services never come to public attention nor cause service disruptions, shared Samuli Könönen, a security expert at Finland’s Cybersecurity Centre. Mikko Rauhamaa, head of the Central Criminal Police’s cybercrime division, emphasized that protecting services is a race against time, with criminal technologies evolving alongside protective measures.