Report: Trust and collaboration as foundations to fight fraud

Keeping good customers safe.

Johannesburg, 13 Jun 2023

Digital fraud rose significantly in 2022 compared to 2021, with the global attack rate up 20% year over year (YOY) – continuing the early signs seen in 2021 as some economies re-opened. While parts of Europe were back in lockdown for a brief period at the start of the year, most of the world was starting to look forward, beyond the pandemic, even if many Asian countries didn’t re-open their borders to international travel until the middle of 2022.

Cyber criminals had already been looking forward to expanding opportunities. Countries historically less impacted by fraud – Singapore, for example – were being clearly targeted at the start of the year with a surge in fraud attacks. By the end of the year, not only was much of the world back open for business, but there was talk of a new global fraud pandemic. Scams of all kinds – both traditional account takeover through phishing attacks as well as sophisticated authorised push payment fraud – were frequently in the news. Reports of industrial-scale scam centres and gangs in Asia and Eastern Europe(1) confirm that scams have become the latest organised digital crime, operating professionally and cross-border. 

As fraud levels and sophistication increase, it becomes more important than ever to classify fraud into different types. Legacy fraud prevention approaches relying primarily on multi-factor authentication are insufficient, as are basic, single-model fraud detection solutions or black box approaches. Multiple, machine learning optimised detection models are required, running in real-time and targeting different methods of attack.

More than ever, understanding the customer journey and behaviour can help identify potential attacks in their early stages and prompt a response – for example, a real-time, in-app message to the end-user/customer confirming that they are about to make an unusual payment and to verify they are not being coerced into doing this can help bring about a last-minute sanity check and end an otherwise successful attack. Being able to tie together a 360-degree view of your customers across digital channels is also imperative to ensure fraudsters don’t exploit weaknesses with a multi-channel attack. 

Please click here to view the Cybercrime Report Global infographic.

Please click below to download the report and learn more.

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