Expert Commentary On Security Risk For Gaming Industry

The gaming industry is booming and is expected to reach $174 billion by 2021. The growth the industry is experiencing makes it an attractive and lucrative target for fraudsters. Gaming merchants are, by design, a high transaction digital good providing service. Because you cannot delay a digital gaming transaction for several days like you can on a physical goods purchased online, the window for a gaming company to screen transactions is very limited — which enables more fraud to slip through.

In this particular incident, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ‘keys’ are now going to be tied to the purchasing account to avoid further fraudulent activity. Unfortunately, this only opens up doors for hackers to commit different types of fraud, like account takeovers, which are the result of high-profile data breaches that make credentials and customer data readily available for purchase on the dark web. When combined with the sophisticated tools cybercriminals are using to commit automated fraud at scale, these attacks are easy to execute and allow fraudsters to extract monetary value a number of different ways.

Because of this steady increase in account takeover attacks, the gaming industry will need to balance consumer expectations of a quick, seamless customer experience with fraud and risk management. And, as fraudster’s strategies continue to become more sophisticated, gaming companies must find ways to stop the inauthentic profiles and put preventative measures in place that validate users are human to combat this growing problem. By focusing on prevention, companies can remove the economic window and the ROI motivating these attackers in the first place.