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A CISO’s Guide To Stopping ATO Against The Digital Storefront

As originally published in the RH-ISAC blog

For any major online storefront, account takeover (ATO) attacks are a growing threat. ATO fraud attempts to steal from consumers and e-commerce merchants rose 282% between Q2 2019 to Q2 2020, according to recent research. ATO attempts should be on the radar of CISOs as a top potential business and compliance risk for 2021. Recovering from a successful ATO attack can cost a business millions of dollars in hard costs (repaying customers, chargebacks) and soft costs (brand damage, time spent on remediation and customer support). As an area of rapid growth, ATOs are also on the forefront of a revolution of professionalized cybercrime. Cybercriminals today are more sophisticated, relying on specialized tools to mount attacks that are larger and more persistent, yet harder to detect. This article provides a guide for CISOs and other security leaders to stop ATOs through a combination of better application of technology and a better understanding of the latest tactics cybercriminals use.

What is an ATO attack?

Account takeover (ATO) is an attack in which cybercriminals take over online accounts using stolen usernames and passwords, leading to online identity theft. Typically, criminals purchase a list of credentials on the dark web. Most people reuse username and password combinations multiple times for different accounts. So once attackers have a combination that works on one site, they then go and try to use the same password and username combination on other popular sites in hopes of finding an account owned by the same person. With billions of personal records leaked during data breaches in the past decade, the dark web is awash in username and password combinations. Combinations that are validated can be worth $20 or higher on the dark web. Cybercriminals also use brute force methods to guess passwords (Read more...)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from PerimeterX Blog authored by PerimeterX Blog. Read the original post at: https://www.perimeterx.com/resources/blog/2021/a-ciso-s-guide-to-stopping-ato-against-the-digital-storefront/