Global data and analytics company LexisNexis Risk Solutions has released a new report investigating digital fraud, revealing a substantial surge in fraud attacks in 2023. As part of the newly launched Cybercrime Report, LexisNexis Risk Solutions focused on analysing the state of digital fraud worldwide, with the company disclosing a 17% increase in digital fraud attacks within the financial services sector in 2023.

Considering activities that were conducted between January and December 2023, the assessment made by LexisNexis Risk Solutions looked into consumer interactions across several stages of the online journey, including account creation, logins, payments, password resets, and monetary transfers. LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ report findings Within the research, LexisNexis Risk Solutions highlighted that human-initiated attacks in the financial services industry soared to 1.2% last year, with North America seeing a 30% increase in attack rates. On the other hand, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) witnessed a decline of 15% and 24%, respectively.

In addition to this, the financial services sector continued to withstand the highest level of automated bot attacks, seeing 1.8 billion attacks, which represents nearly 50% of the worldwide total of 3.5 billion. Regardless of this substantial volume, the number of bot attacks in the industry minimised by 6% year-over-year (YoY). Furthermore, due to the expansion of the mobile channel, mostly mobile browsers, new account creation attacks surged by 12% YoY, with fraudsters leveraging stolen or synthetic identities to make accounts for accessing online services or obtaining lines of credit. At the same time, payment fraud soared by 9% YoY, which in turn underlines a heightened financial risk for financial institutions.

Fraudsters mainly leveraged alternative payment methods, including direct deposit, to conduct their operations, with payment fraud mainly occurring via mobile channels. The surge in digital fraud attacks LexisNexis Risk Solutions Cybercrime Report underlined that digital fraud attacks across all sectors surged by 19% YoY in 2023, with the most substantial increase being witnessed in North America, nearly 43% YoY, and the ecommerce sector, which soared 59% YoY. In addition, third-party account takeover was among the most common types of fraud in 2023, accounting for 28.7% of all cases, while other widespread forms included scams (16%), bonus abuse (16%), and first-party fraud (14.6%). Moreover, the company’s report that 2023 also saw an accelerated rise in authorised payment fraud, especially in Southeast Asia where scam centres boomed.

Mostly focusing on misleading unwitting victims globally out of their financial savings, organised criminal groups, primarily from China, conduct their operations across Southeast Asia, particularly in the poorer states of Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. The current report follows LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ research on global financial crime costs from October 2023, when the company revealed a rise in financial crime compliance costs. Source: Link .