Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Investment scams are a growing problem. Modern cybercriminals are increasingly using this technique to swindle money out of unsuspecting victims. It’s easy to understand why: investment scams are remarkably effective. Research from Barclays even found that they accounted for a staggering 33% of all money lost to scammers in 2023. It’s clear then that many people don’t know how to identify an investment scam.

A KnowBe4 Threat Lab Publication Authors: Jeewan Singh Jalal, Anand Bodke, and Martin Kraemer Executive Summary The KnowBe4 Threat Lab analyzed a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting multiple organizations to harvest Microsoft credentials. Threat actors utilized a compromised domain, its subdomains, bulk email services, and open redirect vulnerability to evade detection and increase click success rates.

Drivers across the U.S. are being bombarded with fraudulent text messages claiming to come from toll operators like E-ZPass. These messages threaten fines for unpaid toll fees and aim to steal personal and financial information. Security experts warn that these scams are becoming more sophisticated, driven by new phishing tools developed and sold in China.

Fraud in financial services is becoming more sophisticated, costing the industry billions annually and eroding customer trust. Recently, Deloitte published an article highlighting the risk AI brings in the form of fraudsters to the financial services industry: “Fake content has never been easier to create — or harder to catch. As threats grow, banks can invest in AI and other technologies to help detect fraud and prevent losses.”

In 2024’s State of Digital Impersonation Resilience report there was one key finding that neatly frames the digital impersonation fraud challenge. Of the businesses surveyed, 72% use a digital impersonation protection solution, but only 6% could confirm its efficacy. In other words, scam-targeted industries are investing in finding solutions, but those solutions aren’t delivering.

AI is revolutionizing our lives in terms of productivity, automation, customer service, and more. AI is becoming so important that organizations increased spending on compute and storage hardware infrastructure for AI deployments by 37% year-over-year in the first half of 2024, reaching $31.8 billion. However, like most technological advances, the good often comes with the bad.