Cybercriminals have been well ahead of the curve when it comes to cybersecurity in the online retail industry. Specifically, criminals have been exploiting changes in purchasing behavior that favor online transactions and adapting their methods to take advantage of the authentication challenges arising when a card is not present (CNP) at the time of the transaction.

“Joker’s Stash”, the largest dark web marketplace for buying & selling stolen payment card data, announced on January 15, 2021 that it is shutting down. The last day of activity will be February 15, 2021.

It’s the time of year when many of us will be taking a well-deserved break, but unfortunately for consumers and organisations, cyber criminals don’t take holidays. A year of unprecedented alarm and uncertainty, coupled with the growing sophistication of cybercriminals, has nurtured the perfect breeding ground for online scams, which according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) have jumped a staggering 42% this year—with nearly AU$7 million lost.1

Fraud rates for Unemployment Insurance Benefits (UIB) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) are out of control. In May 2020, Brian Krebs of Krebsonsecurity published two articles detailing fraud that was occurring in several different state’s UIB portals. These states had been warned by the US Secret Service to be on the lookout for this. Reading the articles, the common theme is that many states are missing rudimentary controls for combating fraud.

As the retail world’s center of gravity shifts to the cloud, payment card fraud has followed suit. According to Verizon’s retail vulnerabilities study, attacks against e-commerce applications are by far the leading cause of retail data breaches. This trend mirrors similar outcomes in other industries, like food service. A complimentary Verizon study finds remote attacks against food service operators on the rise, as well.

We are about to enter the most wonderful time of the year. As consumers increasingly turn towards online and mobile commerce, are you confident in your card-not-present fraud detection capabilities? 2020 has been a year of great surprise and change. While the global health pandemic has changed how we physically interact with each other, it has also revolutionized how we shop.

There is no more effective initial attack vector than phishing. With an ability to reach well-within your organization’s logical perimeter all the way down to an individual user’s Inbox with some form of malicious content, phishing has proven to be a challenge to organizations working to maintain a proper security stance. On top of this, phishing attacks have some pretty impressive accolades.