January is always a difficult month, with many workers returning after a long Christmas break to hundreds of emails and the stress of the new business season. The financial sector faces no exception to this and is probably the industry that will be suffering the most in the coming weeks.

To ensure all work is completed on time and to a good standard, many of the financial organisations will have their staff working around the clock. But what does this mean in regards to the IT infrastructure? The impact of workers connecting to the company network at all hours could put a huge strain on the network, which supports all other components of technology that these employees and contractors may need to work effectively. This is especially frustrating seeing as they are working all hours to progress documents quickly.

But whilst an overload of people on the network could affect productivity, organisations must prepare for another issue, the threat of the overburdened network simulating the effect of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. So many individuals accessing the network from an array of devices could confuse the IT infrastructure so that it goes into lockdown systems thinking it is under a DoS attack.

As mentioned in a previous blog, ‘Know your network to avoid DoS attacks’, downtime is a fiercely severe issue for stockbrokers who have to rely on fast reaction and quick trading to stay ahead of the competition. It is also extremely frustrating for customers who are unable to log into their accounts.

The only way of avoiding both real DoS attacks and false-positives due to overburdened networks is to use a system which can offer full visibility into what is really going on across the network. This will allow for any needed interception and prevention, making it at least a little bit less stressful for those who are working constantly throughout the working day and into the night.