130 million fraud attacks during a 90-day window!
That’s the accelerating pace at which cyber crimes and fraudulent online banking transactions are detected across the international banking landscape, these days.
Data also reveals that this rate of growth in underground cyber crime is even 50% faster than the growth of genuine banking transactions recorded by the banking industry itself.
As technology seeps down to the underground crime world, cyber crime experts have mastered the art of networking, cross-border transaction intercepts and even global reach for their activities, it is learnt.
The malaise is rampant across the emerging markets of which several countries in South America have featured as prominent playing fields.
It is understood that Europe is also evolving as a cyber crime hub which could well be the centre point to attack other strong economies in other parts of the world.
A recent study conducted by a leading research and digital identity firm, ThreatMetrix, analyzed more than 5 billion online transactions and found that the sheer volume of these fraudulent transactions indicated the astounding spread and increasingly devastating impact of stolen and breached ID data, available to the crime world.
According to the Vanita Pandey, Vice President of ThreatMetrix, ‘ Identities are being bought, sold, traded and augmented by criminals seeking to improve the success of their increasingly complex attacks … Identities are the critical currency in cybercrime this year and it is up to businesses to look beyond static data to check that users are who they say they are.”
New cyber crime techniques and attack vectors and patterns are becoming more challenging to be confronted, as the technology update reaches the hands of the attackers, the report noted.
Trojans such as Remote Access Trojan (RAT) are coming out with remote access software with precise social engineering attacks.
Fintech is being hit with identity spoof, that focus on peer-to-peer loans, global remittances and potential loopholes in new and emerging platforms.
It was discovered that a growth rate of 80% occurred on year-to-year, on digit wallet transactions and this lend itself to a major attention for fraudsters to concentrate on this financial digitization segment. As opposed to this, the BOT attacks registered were a whopping 180% increase, during the year.
Another area of concern is the media industry that is becoming a breeding ground for identity testing with low barriers and security gates – making the finance industry susceptible to fake news and reviews.
Pandey feels that ‘businesses must become the all-powerful lion to the fraudsters’ gazelle, outsmarting them with dynamic shared intelligence to genuinely understand online users’ unique digital identities.’
US cyber crime rates stand only second to the figures coming in from Europe, which ranks 50% higher than the former. Little wonder, Europe is slowly becoming the largest cyber crime hub in recent times.
With the proliferation of the mobile phone technology, apps related to this segment have found a continuous growth and digital business is giving the mobile experience a priority to improve customer services.
45% of banking transactions, it is learnt, comes from mobile apps, a major area of Fintech attention.
The smarter the crime developers get, the more cautious and sharp-eyed bank managements must become. This then, is the key take-away, from the digital world today, for the finance sector to face the future in cyber crime.
