This blog is a part of our new series 5 Strategies for Building Resilience to Financial Crimes and Cyber Attacks in 2022. In the last few years, we have all observed an increase in the sophistication of cyber-enabled attacks and financial crimes. This coincided with intensified focus on digital banking by financial institutions and increased volumes of online transactions.

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.