Page 21 - Insurance Times October 2019

and other benefits of these social media platforms, and malware to the mobile channel. Digital transformation
continuation of this trend in 2019 should come as no will continue to unfold for both legitimate businesses and
surprise. Trade in stolen identities would gain greater the cybercriminals who target them for fraud. It says that
momentum with more stores likely opening on legitimate during 2019 it expects the following three trends to evolve
platforms to sell this type of data. According to researchers, further and grow even more prevalent as organizations
fraud in the mobile channel has grown significantly over the continue to leverage the mobile channel to deliver new
last several years, with 70% of artifice originating in the digital services to customers.
mobile channel in 2018. The RSA study has found that
frauds from mobile apps increased 680% between 2015 Cybercrime trends in 2019
and 2018.
1. Growing use of mobile to commit cybercrime

The use of rogue mobile applications to defraud consumers 2. Adoption of legitimate digital platforms for illicit
was also on the rise. While one out of five cyber-attacks activities
was attributed to rogue mobile apps in 2018, RSA identified 3. Use of advanced technologies both to commit and to
an average of 82 rogue mobile applications a day last year fight cybercrime
across popular app stores. The report states that 65 per
cent of the cyber crimes were for illicit financial gains. Cyber-criminals are using Blockchain for
Corporate rivalry follows in the list of motives, with 54 per
cent cyber attacks meant for malicious damage to business their advantage
operations, whereas 46 per cent fall under corporate The RSA study points out that it reported last year on the
espionage. use of a blockchain-based domain name system (DNS) to
host sites such as stores that sell credit card information
Interestingly, 18 per cent attacks are acts of war or or other stolen data. Unlike traditional DNS addresses,
terrorism from other countries, via the digital world. India which are subject to oversight by governing organizations
emerged as the third most vulnerable country in terms of like ICANN, blockchain based DNS addresses have no
risk of cyber threats, such as malware, spam and oversight.
ransomware:
That makes it harder for law
enforcement to interfere with their
operations, including taking down
sites, and that makes the popularity
of blockchain among cybercriminals
likely to grow. This is one reason
RSA anti-fraud experts are
predicting more fraud websites will
be utilising blockchain domains in
2019. Cybercriminals are exploiting
this trend, both by taking advantage
of the increasing difficulty of
authenticating identities and by
taking advantage of digital
technologies themselves. Indian
companies have been hit again and
Frauds via mobile channels are popular again by computer viruses.
amongst cyber criminals
Digital transformation is proving to be a
The popularity of the mobile channel for fraud will continue
through 2019, especially as cyber criminals keep finding double-edged sword
ways to introduce tactics and technologies such as phishing As the digital transformation of both business and

The Insurance Times, October 2019 21