New Outseer Fraud & Payments Report Confirms Massive Increase in Brand Abuse Cyber Attacks, Jumping 158% From Q1 2020

Outseer has published its latest quarterly fraud and payments report, uncovering a significant spike in brand abuse attacks and a continued shift to more precise payment authentication methods. The Q2 installment of the report features insights from January through March of 2021 as captured through the Outseer Global Data Network, and collected while authenticating consumer transactions and investigating threats on behalf of Outseer customers.

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According to the report, Brand Abuse attacks impersonating companies through social media and published content now represents the majority of fraud attacks, growing from 27% in Q4 2020 to 68% in Q1 2021. This dramatic shift is attributed to the increased use of digital platforms including social media, web publishing, and cloud-based collaboration tools during the pandemic – all fertile hunting ground for fraudulent activity.

Phishing attacks designed to harvest user credentials represented 25% of all attack types for the quarter, followed by rogue mobile apps at 21%. Although the share of rogue mobile apps decreased slightly from the previous quarter, it is worth noting that this attack type increased by 14% in the same quarter vs. 2020. At just 7% of mix, Trojan Horse attacks injecting malware designed to harvest sensitive information and user credentials dropped again as threat actors have shifted fraud strategies to Brand Abuse.

“It comes as no surprise that fraud attack volume continues to grow at a record pace, considering the pronounced shift to digital commerce throughout the pandemic,” said Armen Najarian, Chief Marketing Officer of Outseer. “Global eCommerce spending grew 28% annually to $4.2 trillion in 2020, paving the way for more fraudulent behavior and more sophistication in attack types.”

Other notable insights from the Q2 Outseer Fraud & Payments Report include:

• Visibility into the more than 41,000 global cyber attacks
• Brand Abuse attacks volume share increased from the same time last year by 58% to 68% of all attacks in Q1 2021
• Phishing-based threats representing 25% of all attacks
• The U.S. accounts for 74% of all ISPs hosting phishing attacks
• The U.S was targeted by 16% of worldwide phishing attacks, with Canada at 22%
• The average value of fraudulent transaction in the web channel ($7,367) more than 2x the average value of a fraudulent transaction in the mobile channel ($3,368)
• Worldwide payment transaction volume authenticated with EMV 3-D Secure protocol grew by 59% year-over-year (Q1 2020 vs. Q1 2021)
• Worldwide payment transaction volume authenticated with the EMV 3-D Secure 2.0 protocol grew by 1667% year-over-year (Q1 2020 vs. Q1 2021)

Download the Q2 2021 report here: https://go.outseer.com/Fraud-Report-Q2.html

About Outseer

Outseer, an RSA Company, empowers the digital economy to grow by authenticating billions of transactions annually. Our payment and account monitoring solutions increase revenue and reduce customer friction for card issuing banks, payment processors, and merchants worldwide. Leveraging 20 billion annual transactions from 6,000 global institutions contributing to the Outseer Data Network, our identity-based science delivers the highest fraud detection rates and lowest customer intervention in the industry. See what others can’t at outseer.com.

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Contact information

David Pedersen
David.Pedersen@outseer.com