Fraud attack rate more than doubles despite transaction growth: report

Human-initiated attacks rose 130%, outpacing the 9% growth in digital transactions.

The fraud attack rate more than doubled over the past year as fraud activity outpaced digital transactions, according to LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

The report found that transactions in Hong Kong within the LexisNexis Digital Identity Network grew 9% YoY, with 1.3 billion transactions analysed. However, human-initiated attack volume rose 130% over the same period.

As a result, Hong Kong’s attack rate increased 118% YoY. Despite the sharp rise, its overall attack rate of 1.0% remained below the global average of 1.6%.

LexisNexis said the increase reflected a significant rise in fraudster activity in Hong Kong, evident across most industries, particularly in e-commerce, gaming, and gambling.

Automated bot attack volume also climbed sharply, rising 172% to 44 million.

Mobile transactions continued to dominate in Hong Kong, accounting for 90% of transactions, compared with 10% for desktop. Mobile apps made up 97% of mobile transactions, whilst mobile browsers accounted for only 3%.

However, attacks shifted back toward desktop. Desktop accounted for 74% of attacks, whilst mobile accounted for 26%. Hong Kong also saw a 40% decline in the mobile share of attacks, mirroring the global trend but at a faster pace.

Desktop attack rates were significantly higher than mobile app attack rates. Hong Kong’s desktop attack rate stood at 7.2%, compared with 0.1% for mobile apps. The mobile browser attack rate was 5.5%.