Protect Your Digital Storefront from Automated Bot Attacks this Holiday Shopping Season

While digital transformation has been underway for years, and consumer behavior has adapted to the increasing dominance of the online world, nobody could have predicted the seismic jump forward the COVID-19 pandemic would catalyze, forcing entire sectors online. This was common knowledge to those in the retail sector and to cybercriminals looking to monetize this trend. The PerimeterX Automated Fraud Benchmark Report analyzed billions of online transactions revealing dramatic shifts in online behavior during 2020, including a new normal of higher volume, frequency and sophistication of account takeover (ATO), carding, scraping, and checkout attacks. Here are five key takeaways retailers should be aware of as they respond to this new, digitally transformed world:

1. Cybercriminals Ramped Up Their Activity

Chaos is a cybercriminal’s best friend. PerimeterX found a dramatic increase in malicious activity, from ATO attacks, e-gift card fraud, checkout attacks, which spiked 664 percent at the beginning of the pandemic, and web scraping attacks. Traffic from scraping increased 56.7 percent in the spring of 2020. The cybercriminal economy was thriving as the overall economy was faltering. This was hugely evident when we observed triple-digit spikes in malicious checkout activity in April 2020, which we believe was a result of cybercriminals working to arbitrage harder-to-find goods in order to drive revenue at increased margins. In short, cybercrime doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

2. New Sectors and Verticals Were Exposed to Cybercrime

A diverse mix of online merchants faced attacks throughout the pandemic as criminals expanded both into new verticals such as cleaning supplies and exercise equipment, and attacked smaller businesses more frequently than before. This change reflects something that security practitioners have known for some time: you’re never too small or niche to be a target.

3. ATO Attacks Became King

The sectors (Read more...)