Banks are anxiously bracing for another round of possible cyber attacks on their online systems and the personal information of their customers following the recent assaults that brought dozens of Web sites to a standstill.

Woori and Hana banks were targeted in a second round of attacks throughout Wednesday evening and Thursday afternoon. The sites of Shinhan Bank and Korea Exchange Bank were hit during the first round from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning. None of the banks’ Web sites had experienced major disruptions, yet employees in charge of online security spent the whole night trying to fend off a flurry of attacks from distributed denial of service, or DDoS, disruptions.

Employees at Kookmin Bank, Korea’s largest lender, were on high alert yesterday, trying to beef up equipment and server systems to detect and screen out DDoS attacks and channeling mounting log-in queries to other servers. Woori Bank’s online system monitoring center in Jamsil, southern Seoul, was also scrutinizing online traffic.

We received attacks in the morning and even during the afternoon,” said Hwang In-seop, deputy director at the bank’s e-business division. “We enhanced the signal interception systems from level one to level two and beefed their capacities twofold.

Hana Bank, which opened its brand new online system in May, is preventing the attacks through its new DDoS blocking system.

In fact, local banks established last August a joint monitoring system for possible DDoS attacks and also set up the new blocking system in January this year. Nonghyup - the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation - managed to ward off the latest attacks with the help of the new systems, although it initially did not join the joint efforts back in August.

Some of the banks’ Web sites experienced slower Internet banking, but there were no incidences like leaks of personal information or illegitimate fund transfers,” said Byeon Young-han, director of the Financial Services Commission’s regulatory reform team. “We are preparing step-by-step plans for worst-case situations.

One possible plan in case all Internet banking services are brought to a halt is beefing up phone banking systems and putting more staff behind bank counters.

Meanwhile, Mirae Asset Securities, which experienced a massive attack on its Web site last year, said it has heightened security measures.

Hyundai Securities said it’s operating an emergency team of online security professionals around the clock.

And Samsung Life Insurance and other insurers said they are closely monitoring traffic on their Web sites.

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