NZX Cyber Attacks

You will, no doubt, be aware from media reports of the sustained daily cyber-attacks on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) over the past week. The attacks are conducted via a strategy called Denial of Service (DoS).
 
Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted host with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled.
 
This could be described as being similar to a group of people crowding the entry door of a shop, making it hard for legitimate customers to enter. These types of attacks are very common among banks and online shopping websites.
 
The attacks have resulted in the NZX closing the stock exchange each day of the attacks in order to prevent our stock market from being compromised. It’s believed that a ransom demand has been made to the NZX by the cyber criminals.
 
We wanted to assure you that all your investments held on the FNZ platform remain safe and secure. Attacks on the NZX does not mean that the investments in your portfolio are at risk.
 
Post the initial incident, FNZ’s crisis management team established the following mitigation steps:
 
•          Monitoring network traffic load to predict/detect an attack before it causes outages
•          Blocking of suspicious traffic from the above monitoring
•          Increased DoS mitigation services from FNZ’s Internet Service Providers (which includes reviewing suspicious IP addresses)
 
The only issue we may encounter is a delay in completing buy/sell transactions of investments.
 
The NZX has engaged with the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to assist in tracking down the cyber criminals and putting an end to the attacks.
 
If you are concerned or have any questions, then please don’t hesitate to call our office or contact your Cambridge Partners Adviser.