Juniper: Online payment fraud loss on pace to double by 2023
Cyber-criminals continue to hone their craft, and retailers will remain one of their top targets in the next five years.
That’s according to a new study from Juniper Research which revealed that digital fraud losses stemming from e-commerce, airline ticketing, money transfer and banking services will reach $48 billion by 2023, up from the $22 billion in losses projected for 2018. With such a strong focus on transactional rather than behavioral risk, money transfers will be particularly vulnerable, with fraud losses increasing by over 20% per year to $10 billion in 2023.
The study, “Online Payment Fraud: Emerging Threats, Segment Analysis & Market Forecasts, 2018-2023,” found that a critical driver behind these losses will be the continued high level of data breaches resulting in the theft of sensitive personal information. Cyber-criminals use information gleaned from these breaches to move away from pure identity theft, instead using fragments of real data to create new, synthetic identities.
“Synthetic identity is currently the low-hanging fruit because, even though it takes time for fraudsters to establish, many of their targets are not set up to detect the behavioral giveaways that indicate this type of fraud,” said Juniper’s senior analyst Steffen Sorrell. “Fraud management providers have solutions on the market to combat this, but the industry as a whole is playing catch-up.”
Additionally, techniques practiced by the Magecart hackers, which are highly targeted on credit card skimming attacks, as well as malware often associated with Fin7 hackers could become more common as fraudsters seek to create products from their knowledge. Both groups used a combination of malware and cross-channel approaches for criminal gain. More complex fraud would only become more common as, in effect, a ‘fraud-as-a-service’ economy emerges, the study revealed.
That’s according to a new study from Juniper Research which revealed that digital fraud losses stemming from e-commerce, airline ticketing, money transfer and banking services will reach $48 billion by 2023, up from the $22 billion in losses projected for 2018. With such a strong focus on transactional rather than behavioral risk, money transfers will be particularly vulnerable, with fraud losses increasing by over 20% per year to $10 billion in 2023.
The study, “Online Payment Fraud: Emerging Threats, Segment Analysis & Market Forecasts, 2018-2023,” found that a critical driver behind these losses will be the continued high level of data breaches resulting in the theft of sensitive personal information. Cyber-criminals use information gleaned from these breaches to move away from pure identity theft, instead using fragments of real data to create new, synthetic identities.
“Synthetic identity is currently the low-hanging fruit because, even though it takes time for fraudsters to establish, many of their targets are not set up to detect the behavioral giveaways that indicate this type of fraud,” said Juniper’s senior analyst Steffen Sorrell. “Fraud management providers have solutions on the market to combat this, but the industry as a whole is playing catch-up.”
Additionally, techniques practiced by the Magecart hackers, which are highly targeted on credit card skimming attacks, as well as malware often associated with Fin7 hackers could become more common as fraudsters seek to create products from their knowledge. Both groups used a combination of malware and cross-channel approaches for criminal gain. More complex fraud would only become more common as, in effect, a ‘fraud-as-a-service’ economy emerges, the study revealed.