Asia-Pacific transactions where identity fraud attempts were detected far exceeded other regions including North America in Q2 2023, a new series of insights published by AU10TIX revealed.
Every quarter, the Global Identity Fraud Reports assess trending fraudulent methods that offenders will leverage in an ever sophisticated way. Fraud incidents are prevalent within the banking and finance sector, commerce and digital banking, so the insights analyse millions of consumer transactions processed in 249 countries.
Several striking statistics reveal a 44% increase in North America of organised identity fraud incidents, compared to Q1, while a staggering 4% of transactions in Asia-Pacific regions were identified as ID fraud attempts or attacks, proving that APAC faces a more critical problem of escalating fraud than other continents.
The greatly alarming figures shows that the Asia-Pacific region is currently emerging as the largest target for fraudsters despite not even making it onto a top table of countries suffering with fraud. On August, 8, this publication revealed findings from a company called Surfshark which showed APAC countries were more prepared as leaders in chip-making and cybersecurity across general sectors to counter these types of threats in the midpoint of 2023 (Q2 2023).
By contrast, America, Russia, France and Spain suffered the highest count and population density of data breaches for Q2 2023. In both studies, the worsening outlook of fraud is not consistent across all regions and the findings do differ on account of general breaches affecting private and public sectors and the particular focus on fraud in finance.
Recap the other report here: Breached accounts in Q2 2023: America has highest levels (49.8M), in contrast APAC excluded from fraud table – Identity Week
1.5% of EU transactions were found to be fraudulent in AU10TIX’s study.
The most common industry affected by 47% of attacks was cryptocurrency and trading; payment provider attacks accounted for 32%, while commerce was targeted by 12% of attacks and banking only 2%.
AU10TIX is a global technology leader in identity verification and management that participates in Identity Week.
Emerging regional and industry-specific patterns of ID fraud were collected from April to June 2023. For example, the upsurge in North America incidents could be attributed to ongoing economic recovery and inflationary pressures, which are emboldening professional fraud syndicates.
However you look at it, the festering fraud landscape which shows no signs of slowing down and businesses and individuals will always have to be wary of evolving threats. Between the two reports, there is a worse fraud outlook in APAC for commerce and payments in Q2 2023 than other sectors.
AU10TIX attributes this epidemic to Asian anti-fraud defences that could still be much improved, especially in retail and payments, the study reveals. By comparison, South American organisations experience attack rates of merely 2% because of employing verifiable IDs against government databases, creating a more formidable barrier against fraud.
Does this mean some industries and regions are still not employing/developing good fraud-resistant tech?
Dan Yerushalmi, CEO of AU10TIX, commented on their report:
“By identifying the geographical regions and industry sectors that are experiencing the most acute attack rates, we are alerting businesses in those areas to take additional steps to protect their customers”.
“This (our) data reveals which markets fraudsters consider the most vulnerable with the most potentially lucrative return. We hope that by sharing our analysis on a regular basis, we can contribute to the global reduction of identity fraud and make the world a better place.”
