Cybercrime attacks up 40% across Asia-Pacific, with identity attacks double global average

HONG KONG -   The Asia-Pacific region is facing unprecedented levels of complex cybercrime and fraud attacks, according to a 2016 Q3 Cybercrime report by ThreatMetrix, a digital identity firm.

The report shows that –
• Online transaction volume in Asia-Pacific increased 36% over the previous year;
• Mobile transactions make up 35% of overall transaction volume, a 44% increase since 2015;
• There has been a 40% increase on-year in the number of daily attacks, with China revealed as the most attacked nation in the region;
• Mobile transactions in financial services have almost tripled compared to last year; and
• Cross-border transactions are fuelling high attack rates in APAC, which has higher than average instances of cross-border transactions compared with global figures. These cross-border transactions  are more susceptible to bot attacks and location spoofing than domestic transactions
ThreatMatrix says identity attacks are having an increasing impact on APAC businesses as fraudsters monetise credentials harvested from huge data breaches by testing, validating and augmenting identity data.
Spikes in automated bot attacks, which are being used to carry out identity credential testing activity, are leading to attack peaks where 14% of all transactions are rejected as fraudulent.
Identity spoofing is the most prevalent attack vector in APAC - cybercriminals are actively leveraging stolen identity data to carry out attacks on digital transactions.
"Identities are fast becoming hard currency for cybercriminals perpetrating online fraud,” says Vanita Pandey, Vice President of Strategy and Product Marketing at ThreatMetrix.
“Many of the attacks we see in the Digital Identity Network are focussed on stealing, validating, augmenting and selling identity credentials to make future attacks more lucrative.
"As fraudsters leverage patched-together stolen identities, it is only in understanding the intricacies of a true digital identity that organizations can accurately detect future fraud."  www.threatmatrix.com (ATI).