News

Cybercrime report shows increased attacks on mobile financial services

March 6, 2019

ThreatMetrix, a unit of LexisNexis Risk Solutions , has released its cybercrime report for the second half of 2018. ThreatMetrix recorded 244 million human-initiated attacks in H2 2018, in addition to 3 billion bot attacks.

According to a press release, the H2 2018 Cybercrime Report identifies a shift toward cross-organizational fraud, as well as a change in fraudsters' tactics toward attacks on mobile. This latter trend is particularly prevalent in financial services, where attacks on mobile account logins rose 107 percent in just six months. 

New account creations still have the highest attack rate of all use cases analyzed by ThreatMetrix, with approximately 1 in 8 new accounts rejected as fraudulent.

Key findings from the cybercrime report:

• North American financial services firms saw 48 percent year-over-year growth in attack rates, and a 116 percent increase in mobile transactions, with a 35 percent increase in mobile attacks.
• The most noticeable growth in mobile attacks is on account logins, as fraudsters attempt to infiltrate user accounts by brute force (via mobile bots) or stealth (via mobile remote access attacks). 
• The growth of account login attacks contribute to a 107 percent increase in mobile account takeovers comparison with H1 2018, despite the fact that overall attack rates are low.

"With each cybercrime report that we develop, we gain important new insights into global transaction and attack patterns and the ever-growing, networked footprint of cybercrime," Thomas C. Brown, senior vice president of U.S. commercial markets and global market development at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said in the release.

"Businesses that can harness the power of a global digital identity network that provides near real-time intelligence into the trustworthiness of an online user have a leg up on the competition. A layered defense of fraud, identity and authentication capabilities, including both digital and physical data, across the entire customer journey, is crucial to preventing fraudsters from succeeding."

The report is based on 17 billion digital transactions on the ThreatMetrix Digital Identity Network during the second half of 2018, with 61 percent of digital transactions originating from a mobile device.