Cyber-Crime Way Up Down Under

Jackie Bennion

25 October 2018

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions released its latest cyber-crime figures last Tuesday at the annual Sibos financial conference in Sydney, and it was not good news for the locals.

Financial services attacks emanating from Australia and New Zealand rocketed by 138 per cent between April and June this year -- trumping all other hotspots globally for cyber-crime activity.

The data, collected in real time by the company’s Digital Identity Network, detected and analysed fraudulent online payments, logins and new account applications across 81 million transactions during the three-month period.

More than 16 million of those came from bot attacks, a 33 per cent rise on the previous quarter. The report did not offer details but noted the steep rise coming on the heels of Australia migrating to a new payments platform, known as the NPP.

The new 24/7 payments and clearing system came into fruition in February when Australia’s leading financial houses, including the Big-Four banks, joined forces to usher in an era of fast and secure low-friction banking for the country.

More pain
The findings add to a period of lousy headlines for Australia’s banking and wealth management industry, as failings over money laundering controls, or overcharging for services, have come to light. With use of crypto-currencies also increasing, this opens up fresh concerns about how transactions can be policed.

The LexisNexis® Risk Solutions report said that cyber-attacks rose by 157 per cent in China and by 59 percent across South East Asia in the three months to June, but the report singles out Australia as being the greatest concern.

It is among the top-five destinations being attacked by cyber-operators from some of the most active areas, including the US, the UK and China, and regularly among the top countries generating attacks - it has gained this distinction in nine of the last 14 quarters, according to Nexis figures. Some of these attacks are assailants appropriating IPs “suggesting” attacks are coming from Australia and New Zealand when really they are being launched by serial offenders the other side of the world.

Cyber-crime has become a relentless and sophisticated moving target that cost global markets more than $600 billion, or nearly 1 per cent of global GDP, last year.

Organisations are grappling constantly with shifting technologies, risk management systems struggling to keep pace, and a cast of bad actors looking to exploit every opportunity.

Spoofing a person’s identity is the preferred way of breaching a system, and spoofing devices not far behind, suggesting a healthy franchise given that 58 per cent of transactions globally are now done from mobile devices.

Thomas Brown, senior vice president in US commercial and global market development for LexisNexis Risk Solutions says that criminals are targeting financial institutions at their weakest point - “their customers”.

Once that happens, he says, the likelihood of “fraudsters gaining access to conduct account takeover or account login attacks or money laundering is high”.

This latest data sweep is part of a thriving business in transactions analysis, and suggests Australia and New Zealand are soft targets.