Cybersecurity ETFs capitalized on the internet’s woes Friday as traders looked to companies that can help counter future attacks on big online names.
On Friday, the PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF (NYSEArca: HACK) rose 1.2% and the First Trust NASDAQ CEA Cybersecurity ETF (NasdaqGM: CIBR) gained 0.3%.
CyberSec companies rallied after a distributed denial service (DDoS) attack took down systems run by Dyn Inc., one of the largest internet service providers in the world, USA Today reports.
Two successive attacks blocked multiple major websites early Friday, cutting off access to Twitter (NasdaqGS: TWTR), Spotify, Netflix (NasdaqGS: NFLX), Amazon (NasdaqGS: AMZN), Tumblr and Reddit.
“This attack is mainly impacting US East and is impacting Managed DNS customers in this region. Our Engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue,” Dyn said.
Denial of service attacks occur when someone or a group floods a particular site or service with a sudden influx of fake traffic to overwhelm the system and to take it offline.
[related_stories]Similar to previous periods of online attacks, cybersecurity stocks rallied on the increased attention to safeguarding our rising usage of internet-based services.
The PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF was the first cybersecurity-related ETF to hit the market back in November 2014. HACK reflects an index comprised of companies that offer hardware, software, consulting and services to defend against cybercrime. Top holdings include Infoblox (NasdaqGS: BLOX) 5.2%, Qualys (NasdaqGS: QLYS) 4.7% and Palo Alto Networks (NasdaqGS: PANW) 4.6%.
The First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF, which was launched in July last year, also tracks a similar basket of companies involved in building, implementation and management of security protocols applied to private and public networks to provide protection of data and operations. CIBR is a little more top heavy, with its top components including NXP Semiconductors (NasdaqGS: NXPI) 7.0%, PANW 6.6% and Symantic (NasdaqGS: SYMC) 5.9%.
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PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF