Account Takeover Increased Tenfold in 2017: NuData

“The trends underline the value of authentication solutions based on behavioral biometrics, which are able to run passively in the background of authenticated sessions.”

NuData Security is publicizing some worrying trends from data collected from its behavioral biometrics platform.

One is a jump in “high-risk” security events, which reached 40 percent in 2017. The company says that for the year past half of all login attempts were high-risk, compared to only 15 percent in 2016; and that “account takeovers increased ten-fold in 2017,” according to a statement from the company.

The trends underline the value of authentication solutions based on behavioral biometrics, which are able to run passively in the background of authenticated sessions. As NuData explains, “Account takeover is notoriously difficult to combat, as companies can’t discern between legitimate and fraudulent users – as they are both presenting correct credentials.”

NuData’s data also revealed a logical consequence of the rise in EMV technology in the US. The company says that total purchases processed through its platform had doubled between 2016 and 2017, while those made with “flagged credit cards” also doubled over the same period. The rise in purchases may simply reflect growing enthusiasm for online shopping, while the rise in online fraud is the result of a shift on the part of fraudsters, who are finding it increasingly difficult to run scams with physical chip cards and are therefore taking their illicit business to the e-commerce domain.

And that, again, points to the growing value of behavioral biometrics and other sophisticated online authentication solutions. Shopping is going digital, and so is crime, so security has to follow.

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May 1, 2018 – by Alex Perala