Cyberattacks increased 20 percent on a year-to-year basis in the financial services industry during the last six months of 2021 and 41 percent from the first part of the year, according to a LexisNexis Risk Solutions report.
The increase comes as e-commerce transactions continued to grow despite easing pandemic restrictions. Year-over-year financial services transactions grew by 52 percent worldwide, according to LexisNexis Risk Solutions, and the mobile share of transactions reached 75 percent for the first time.
“The underbanked are choosing easily accessible digital banking solutions, retail investors are embracing cryptocurrency exchanges and Buy Now Pay Later is seeing global popularity in the payment landscape,” according to the report. “While fraudsters are continuing their use of automated bot attacks seen throughout the pandemic, the human-initiated attack rate seen in the network rose for the first time since 2019, with financial services being the clear target.”
As financial sector attacks become more complicated, criminals initiate them “by obtaining new mobile phone contracts or taking over the accounts of existing wireless customers for use later in bank account takeover attempts or new account fraud,” according to LexisNexis Risk Solutions. To prevent such fraud, banks should educate their employees — especially new digital users — to ensure they are aware of the risks of clicking on fraudulent links in emails and text messages, according to the report.
“Data is key here — being able to understand historical transaction history for an account, in combination with the rich digital intelligence that identifies the usual device, location and behavior associated with account access, together with any active threats,” the report stated.
The report comes as the cost of cyberattacks reached $18.3 million annually per company in 2021, according to the data firm Fortunly. The United States sustained 1,473 cyberattacks over the last year, leading to 164.6 million successful data breaches. It is estimated that spending on cybersecurity training will reach $10 billion in 2027.