3.3 Million Incidents of Fraud in England and Wales, over Half Cyber-related

The Office for National Statics (ONS)  released its crime in England and Wales statistical bulletin. One of the things it revealed is that there were 3.3 million incidents of fraud in England and Wales alone, and over half of these (1.9 million incidents) were cyber-related.

Ryan Wilk, VP at NuData Security, said: “This level of recorded fraud figures is astounding, and bad news for consumers who often bear the brunt of many direct costs and pains - especially in account takeover and new account fraud. The increasing volume of attacks globally has also been attributed to more fraudsters willing to commit the crime, more data available on the black market, and more financial institutions and merchants that are vulnerable to attacks.

"It’s incumbent upon companies to secure their customers’ trust by keeping their accounts safe from hackers without hurting their customer experience. They can’t afford to hear their customers say, ‘My account got hacked again.’

"To detect out of character and potentially fraudulent transactions before they can create a financial nightmare for consumers, we must adopt new authentication methods that they can’t deceive.  Solutions based on consumer behaviour and interactional signals are leading the way to provide more safety for consumers, and less fraud in the marketplace.

"There are solutions on the market now that can identify machines from humans, then separate good machines from bad, selects known humans from unknown humans, and finally sorts unknown humans demonstrating low-risk signals from unknown humans demonstrating high-risk signals. This process lets organisations fast track the known and low-risk users for an optimal experience, saving the friction and traditional authentication methods for the highest risk users.”