Global Brands Increasingly Target Chinese Digital Users, As Latest Data Reveals China to be the Top Cybercrime Spot in Asia Pacific Region

Global cybercrime attacks rise 35 percent in the past quarter while cybercriminals target a complex cross-border environment in China

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Latest data from ThreatMetrix^®, The Digital Identity Company^®, reveals highly elevated attack levels in China during the past quarter. China has the highest rate of transactions being rejected as fraudulent across the entire Asia Pacific region. This comes as global businesses are increasingly targeting the Chinese domestic market -- despite the complexities imposed by tight restrictions online.

"Global brands are facing unique fraud prevention challenges in China. Legitimate consumers are displaying behaviour traditionally associated with fraudsters, such as having jailbroken devices and using proxies, to circumvent web restrictions," says Pascal Podvin, SVP of operations at ThreatMetrix. "Businesses must factor in these complexities when accepting cross-border transactions from China, without making themselves vulnerable to increased cybercrime."

In the Asian region as a whole, cybercrime levels are rising due to stolen and breached identity data being widely available to cybercriminals. Asia also has the highest global levels of identity spoofing attacks and attacks on account logins, as cybercrime gangs attempt to monetize this stolen identity data.

New cybercrime techniques lead to rising attack levels

The Q1 2017 Cybercrime Report found that attack vectors and attack patterns are evolving and becoming more pernicious:

• Strong footprint of Remote Access Trojans (RATs)  in the financial services industry.
• Fintech saw identity spoofing attacks targeted at peer-to-peer loans and emerging platforms.
• 80 percent increase in digital wallet transactions year-on-year and a 180 percent increase in associated bot attacks
• Forty-five percent of transactions now come from mobile platforms
• Financial services has the strongest mobile footprint and highly elevated customer engagement from mobile users, who login three times more often

"The complexity and speed of evolving attack vectors continues to take us by surprise," says Vanita Pandey, VP of product marketing at ThreatMetrix. "Businesses must become the all-powerful lion to the fraudsters' gazelle, outsmarting them with dynamic intelligence to understand customers' unique digital identities."

Q1 2017 Cybercrime Report -- download now

The ThreatMetrix Q1 Cybercrime Report is based on actual cybercrime attacks from January to March 2017 that were detected by the ThreatMetrix® Digital Identity Network®.

ThreatMetrix is the market-leading cloud solution for authenticating digital personas and online transactions. www.threatmetrix.com.

CONTACT:
Ken Lam
ThreatMetrix
[email protected]
+852-61800905