Fraud Trends From Over 325,000 Fraud Cases Recorded In 2016

Cifas, the UK’s leading fraud prevention service released a new report detailing the fraud trends from over 325,000 fraud cases recorded in 2016. The data, from 387 organisations, including many major UK brands, is one of the most comprehensive pictures of fraud and fraudulent attempts made in the UK. Robert Capps, VP of Business Development at fraud mitigation specialists, NuData Security commented below.

Robert Capps, VP of Business Development at NuData Security:

“This rise in recorded fraud figures is astounding, and bad news for consumers who often bear the brunt of many direct costs, especially in account takeover and new account fraud. The increasing volume of attacks globally has also been attributed to more fraudsters willing to commit the crime, more data available on the black market, and more financial institutions and merchants that are vulnerable to attacks. It’s incumbent upon companies to secure their customers’ trust by keeping their accounts safe from hackers. They can’t afford to hear their customers say, ‘My account got hacked again.’

To detect out of character and potentially fraudulent transactions before they can create a financial nightmare for consumers, we must adopt new authentication methods that they can’t deceive.  Solutions based on consumer behaviour and interactional signals are leading the way to provide more safety for consumers, and less fraud in the marketplace.

There are solutions on the market now that can identify machines from humans, then separate good machines from bad, selects known humans from unknown humans, and finally sorts unknown humans demonstrating low-risk signals from unknown humans demonstrating high-risk signals. This process lets organisations fast track the known and low-risk users for an optimal experience, saving the friction and traditional authentication methods for the highest risk users.

We too are seeing in our Consortium of 80 billion annual behavioural transactions, that attackers are rapidly evolving their methods to more complex, evolved schemes. Organisations must be ever vigilant as fraudsters leverage the mass of freely available data on the dark web for cybercrime. Expecting consumers to maintain strong, non-reused passwords isn’t realistic, which means retailers and FIs need to shoulder an even larger responsibility to protect their consumers. It is more important than ever, as seen in this report, for online merchants to use technology that can help them effectively differentiate good customers from bad.”