Posted by Andre Edelbrock on Tue, Jan 27, 2009
The high-profile revelations last week about the Heartland data breach are a stark reminder that incursions by hackers into financial systems, and the fraud that results, have become mainstream news events. And end-of-year reports for 2008 show the news about security breaches keeps getting more worrisome.
Perhaps the worst of it is their increasing frequency and size. As we discussed recently here, experts such as the Gartner Group’s Avivah Litan believe recession and fraud increases go hand-in-hand as skilled minds lose legit employment and go to the dark side.
But whatever the source, there is certainly more of it.
CIFAS in the UK reports there has been a 207% rise in facility takeover fraud (i.e., account takeover fraud) in 2008 where legitimate accounts are hijacked by various means: “…the sheer scale of the increase is truly alarming. Fraudsters are clearly adapting to current conditions. They know that lending criteria have become more stringent as a result of the credit crunch, and that application fraud is likely to be unsuccessful. They are, therefore, turning their attempts elsewhere…”
ITRC (the Identity Theft Resource Center in the US), starting its 10th year, reports data breaches jumped in 2008 by 47%. ITRC says in this report on 2008 breaches that the bigger number has a couple sources: “two things are happening - the criminal population is stealing more data from companies AND that we are hearing more about the breaches.”
Of course, the Heartland data breach news of last week, in the wake of the high-profile RBS and Hannaford breaches, and the massive TJ Maxx breach two years ago tells us this is a momentum-gaining dark trend no one wants to be caught up in.