Every time your customers make an online payment, they trust that their sensitive data won’t end up in the wrong hands. But what if it did? With cybercriminals using AI and launching direct attacks on payment systems, securing financial transactions has become a high-stakes challenge for businesses worldwide. In the first half of 2023, around 48.77 billion card payments were made with EU/EEA-issued cards, of which an average of 7.31 million were fraudulent.

With the exponential expansion of AI, bad actors are frothing at the mouth. Advanced technology for automating social engineering techniques that previously required technical know-how is now within arm’s reach of anyone with a keyboard. Attempts to exploit and deceive are more common than ever, and they are emptying business’s pockets. In 2023, 800 businesses worldwide reported fraud losses totaling 6.5% of their revenue, amounting to $359 billion.

Customer fraud losses and remediation are often integrated as an inevitable cost of doing business Fraud’s impact on the bottom line is often considered when pricing products and services. This has happened since the first thief swiped a product from a marketplace stand. Today, scams responsible for severe business impact have become increasingly sophisticated, and the creeping costs are increasingly hard to budget for.

Forget ‘billions’, fraud is now a trillion-dollar challenge according to McKinsey, with phishing, account takeovers (ATOs), and credential-based attacks driving unprecedented losses. Needless to say, this step change underlines the urgency for scam-prone enterprises to add further protective layers as part of a fraud prevention strategy that combines emerging technologies.

Bonus offers, free trials, gifts, and other promotions are great ways for companies to encourage customer loyalty. But what happens when fraudsters and other malicious actors exploit the system to reap unfair rewards? Welcome to the world of bonus abuse. Bonus abuse costs an average of 15% of the iGaming sector’s annual revenues. This unethical behavior takes advantage of incentives designed to attract new customers or reward long-standing ones.

What if there were a way to negate the effectiveness of multi-factor authentication (or even bypass secure login protocols) without ever cracking a password? Session hijacking offers attackers a tempting shortcut to user accounts, bypassing the usual security barriers. In 2022 alone, researchers scouring the shadier corners of the internet (like the dark web) found 22 billion device and session cookie records – each of which could help to enable session hijacking.

Today, businesses don’t just rely on digital networks—they’re woven into them, with partners, third-party apps, and cloud platforms shaping their every move. Yet, every click, swipe, and connection opens a new door for attackers. As of August 2024, a staggering 52,000 new common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) were identified worldwide, with last year alone witnessing a record 29,000 CVEs. These numbers paint a clear picture: cyber threats are multiplying at an alarming rate.

If there’s one fraud statistic worth dwelling on as Fraud Awareness Week 2024 passes, it’s this – in the past year, scams of one type or other siphoned $1 trillion globally, according to the Global Scam Alliance’s State of Scams Report 2024. But this figure only scratches the surface of cybercrime’s total global cost, projected to reach $10.5 trillion in 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures, the world’s leading source of cyber research.

In today’s cyber attack scene, data often takes a detour – straight through hackers’ systems. Unlike phishing or ransomware, which aim to trick users into handing over credentials or stealing data directly from systems, a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack involves an unseen intermediary trying to fool each of two parties into thinking he’s the other one, capturing and/or altering information communicated between the parties, etc.

Frequent flyer programs have long been a symbol of loyalty and reward in the airline industry. These programs are intended to reward travelers with benefits and encourage ongoing customer relationships. However, a growing and pervasive threat is lurking beneath the allure of free miles and exclusive perks: Frequent Flyer Miles fraud. At the last credible count in 2018, there were over 30 trillion unspent miles in circulation, according to McKinsey.