The report affirms that leaked information from databases together with various forms of financial sector fraud are on a rapid rise. As an example, a major compilation of over three billion compromised passwords with their associated email addresses have been sorted and then leaked onto a hacker forum. The data is readily available for cybercriminals to exploit for fraudulent activity. Furthermore, Kaspersky has released a new report detailing the extent of account takeover attacks, which in 2020 accounted for over half of all incidents.
In light of these two concenring news stories, Will LaSala, who is the Senior Director of Global Security Solutions at OneSpan, tells Digital Journal about how consumers and business can act to lower their impact.
LaSala says: “It is worrying to see how easily client data has been made available and how rapidly fraudsters have been sift through the results and produce a database of compromised personal information. For consumers, this incident should come as reminder to maintain good password hygiene. Such as, if you are using a static password, it is important to assume that it can or has been compromised. Then to take the correct actions as so to minimise the risk of your personal data being misused.”
He adds: “Taking advantage of additional forms of strong authentication offered by many companies, such as secure ‘PUSH notifications’, or ‘One Time Passwords’ with biometric assessments will help to lower the ability for any compromised credentials to be used by fraudsters.”
Looking forwards, LaSala says: “Furthermore, as businesses digitize, they must maintain a high level of protection against data breaches. Firms must provide customers with and encourage them to use more secure alternatives from traditional passwords. This through adopting an agile, multi-layered approach to security that can thwart attacks using stolen credentials.”
