As guardians of valuable monetary assets and highly sensitive data, financial institutions are the perfect target for cybercriminals. According to IBM, the financial services sector was the number one target of cyberattacks in 2020 among all industries. This means these organizations continue to be challenged and invest heavily in both people and technology to make sure they can withstand attacks of any type.
Protecting your applications from abuse of functionality requires understanding which application features and workflows may be misused as well as the ability to quickly identify potential threats to your services. This visibility is particularly critical in cases where an adversary finds and exploits a vulnerability—such as inadequate authentication controls—to commit fraud.
Phishing exercises are an important tool towards promoting security awareness in an organization. Phishing is effective, simply because it works. However, any social engineer can devise a marvelously deceptive message with an irresistible link that only the most tech-savvy person would spot as a phishing test. Sometimes, the phish can be sent at a time of day that catches the recipient off-guard, which causes a person to click the malicious link.
Countless phishing attempts are made every day, and with Covid-19 causing many organisations to move to remote working, phishing attacks have massively increased over the last year. In fact, last year’s Phishing and Fraud Report found that phishing incidents rose 220% during the height of the global pandemic compared to the yearly average.
In May 2020, Kroll was contacted by a purveyor of high-end meats after receiving several customer complaints of potentially fraudulent credit card activity. The fraud allegations were raised after several customers observed unauthorized transactions on their credit cards shortly after placing orders through the purveyor’s e-commerce website. Kroll quickly assigned one of their seasoned Payment Card Industry (PCI) forensics investigators to review and investigate the matter.
A few weeks ago Seattle-based financial services and data management firm Automatic Funds Transfer Services (AFTS) suffered a serious ransomware attack. A gang called “Cuba” hacked and stole approximately 20 months’ worth of AFTS data, including financial documents, correspondence with bank employees, account movements, balance sheets, and tax documents. The compromised data then was offered for sale on the dark web.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) scammers, who have made rich returns in recent years tricking organisations into transferring funds into their accounts, have found a new tactic which attempts to swindle Wall Street firms out of significantly larger amounts of money. According to a newly published-report by Agari, scammers are seeking to defraud Wall Street businesses and their customers out of US $809,000 on average per incident.
Having closed brick-and-mortar operations on March 16, 2020 for safety reasons, the nearly overnight shift to a purely e-commerce revenue model brought uncertainty. However, a rapid uptick in online sales provided a sense of relief, albeit short-lived. Our client became concerned when a closer look at the online transactions revealed an unusually large volume of electronic gift card purchases made using their private label credit card.
According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the money lost by businesses to fraudsters amounts to over $3.5 trillion each year. The ACFE's 2016 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse states that proactive data monitoring and analysis is among the most effective anti-fraud controls.
