Financial Fraud Action stats highlight risk of business complacency
The latest Financial Fraud Action UK report, reveals financial fraud cases in 2016 totaled 1,857,506, amounting to a loss of £768.8m.
John Marsden, head of ID and Fraud at Equifax, said:
“Impersonation and deception scams, as well as online attacks to compromise data, dominated the fraud landscape during 2016.
“The UK is ahead of many other countries in improving fraud defences, but is also subject to a higher number of attacks and cannot afford to be complacent. As the tactics of fraudsters continue to evolve at an alarming rate, businesses need to focus on how they can keep up. The financial services industry in particular needs to continue working together to educate consumers and share information to help collectively tackle this activity, while also constantly improving their systems to both safeguard consumer personal data and implement appropriate steps to confirm transactions are being completed by genuine customers.
“Losses from payment card fraud totaled £618m, up 9% from £567.5m in 2015. These increases reflect fraudsters and scammers becoming increasingly bold in their activity, while customers continue to be victims of phishing scams, deception and hacking. Businesses too are also firmly in the sight of these sophisticated criminals, evidenced by big data breaches (such as Yahoo) between July and December last year. The criminals who steal this data sell it on to fraudsters via the dark web, creating more opportunities for unlawful activity.
“While some businesses are taking a more serious look at biometrics, there is scope for more investment in technology like this which would provide the necessary barriers to discourage fraudsters. Although getting ahead of fraudsters is not easy, businesses should do all they can to make any attempts by these criminals as difficult as possible.”
