The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered an escalation in the number of state-sponsored actors targeting critical infrastructure with DDoS attacks. Criminal syndicates and smaller players are also exploiting the crisis. From fake fundraising efforts for Ukraine to account takeovers and high-velocity bot-driven attacks such as DDoS, BIN attacks, and terminal attacks, cybercriminals are stepping up their own attacks in an effort to benefit from the turmoil.

If a couple of years ago Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS) were just a nuisance for businesses, today they constitute serious, costly cybercrime. Equally, if not more alarming, is the use of cybercriminals as surrogates in state-to-state political conflicts. The tools for launching these attacks are easily available online. They are so simple and cheap to use that even amateur citizen fraudsters and kids can commit a financial crime.

INETCO® Systems Limited, a global leader in real-time payment fraud prevention, is pleased to announce that TPS, a leading provider of cards and payment solutions, has joined the INETCO ecosystem as a reseller. TPS powers digital payments for various commercial and central banks, telecoms, processors and financial institutions across the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and Europe.

Over the past two years that we have lived with the pandemic, the world has changed dramatically. Those changes provided financial criminals with great opportunities to take advantage of many businesses when they were at their most vulnerable, trying to adjust to a new reality. Remote working environments, the ongoing digitization of services, COVID-19 restrictions – all have contributed to the development of new cyber threats and techniques.

The idea of converging cyber intelligence, AML, and fraud prevention activities to eliminate the gaps between these silos of financial crime risk management has been discussed for years. However, recent developments in global real-time payments, open banking, and booming digital transactions have escalated the need for this convergence. In this era of instant payments and CNP transactions, traditional siloed approaches to financial crime prevention are loosing their effectiveness.

It’s a sure sign that year-end is fast approaching when stores start to display their holiday merchandise and decorations before Hallowe’en is even over. As you start planning for a successful 2022, and focus on payment security and frictionless customer experience, consider the global financial, regulatory and economic factors that will impact your business.

These days, when I cautiously venture to my favourite shopping mall on a weekend, I notice how different it is from a year-and-a-half ago, when no one had ever heard of COVID-19. It is busy, but not nearly as busy as it was back then. Sadly, I can rarely find my shoe size as merchandise stocks are low due to COVID-related supply chain issues.

Vancouver, Canada – September 14th, 2021 – INETCO Systems Limited, a leader in real-time payment fraud prevention, is pleased to announce the launch of INETCO BullzAI, which combines a web application firewall with a real-time payment fraud detection and blocking system in one elegant solution.

A long time ago (in the early 2000s), I was playing games online. One of my accounts was compromised – the password was changed, and multiple “high-priced” items I had earned were “traded” without my knowledge, to the account of another player. One could easily blame my simple password at that time when there were no rules around password strength. Regardless of the reason, what happened was one of the earliest versions of an account takeover (ATO) attack.

Every year, 2%-5% of the global GDP, or US$800 billion-US$2 trillion is being laundered across the globe. That’s almost equivalent to the GDP of Canada (1,643.40 billion USD in 2020) or Italy ($1,886.45 USD in 2020). Neither the record-breaking heat, nor the intense floods experienced around the world this summer seem to have stopped financial criminals from inventing new ways to hide illegal sources of their income.