59% of Online Fraud Occurs on Social Media
According to Group-IB, the majority of online fraud (59%) takes place on social media platforms. Fake websites are the second most common source of violations (23%), followed by mobile apps (6%) created by scammers.
This week, Group-IB received the prestigious Innovation Excellence award from the global consulting agency Frost & Sullivan for its solution in detecting and eliminating digital risks, as well as combating brand misuse—Digital Risk Protection (DRP).
Frost & Sullivan Recognizes Group-IB’s Leadership
The Innovation Excellence award is given to companies that lead the “Frost Radar: European Digital Risk Protection (DRP) Market, 2020” report, which evaluates innovation stability, R&D, global trend awareness, growth dynamics, product concept, company strategy, revenue growth, and market position.
According to Frost & Sullivan, Group-IB currently holds 18.5% of the European digital risk protection market, safeguarding leading international companies from illegal brand use online.
“Group-IB, headquartered in Singapore, holds a significant share of the European digital risk protection market, which was 18.5% in 2019,” the Frost & Sullivan report states. “Group-IB protects leading Fortune 500 companies and key cryptocurrency exchanges in Europe. By combining machine learning and expert analysis, the company effectively detects, classifies, and blocks malicious links without affecting legitimate resources. Its innovative potential and customer-focused product development strategy result in a subscription renewal rate of about 96%.”
New Cyber Threats and the Rise of Brand Abuse
Business digital transformation has led to new cyber threats, particularly brand abuse and online fraud, according to the “Frost Radar: European Digital Risk Protection (DRP) Market, 2020” report. Group-IB estimates that attacks and fraud involving illegal brand use accounted for 54% of all cybercrimes committed in Q1–Q3 2020.
Types of Digital Risk Protection (DRP) Crimes
Group-IB experts divide DRP-related crimes into two main categories:
- Phishing resources that collect victims’ credentials or payment information (16%)
- Online fraud that tricks users into voluntarily sending money to scammers under the guise of online orders, compensation, prize draws, or fake promotions from well-known people or brands (38%)
Personalization and Targeting: The New Trend in Online Fraud
Group-IB’s DRP analysts identify personalization and targeted attacks as the main trends in online fraud. By targeting specific groups of victims, scammers increase their success rates. To make detection and blocking harder, they use personalized links that display content to only one user. These links also provide valuable analytics to criminals. Information entered by users on fraudulent sites is saved and can be passed in the URL to auto-fill personalized forms in later stages of the scam.
To attract traffic, scammers use channels that support targeting and personalization. Most victims fall for scams through ads and direct messages on social media, emails, and messengers.
Challenges for DRP Systems and Cybersecurity Teams
New challenges like personalization and automation of attacks make it much harder to detect fraudulent schemes and criminal infrastructure, changing the requirements for DRP systems. The problem is compounded by the fact that corporate cybersecurity experts are often overwhelmed with internal security tasks and lack resources to monitor external digital threats. To get a complete picture of digital risks online, companies need to use DRP-class solutions, the Frost & Sullivan report emphasizes.
How Group-IB Digital Risk Protection Works
The Group-IB Digital Risk Protection platform is built on artificial intelligence and proactively detects fraud and eliminates criminal infrastructure even at the preparation stage. Its algorithms are based on years of experience protecting over 350 brands worldwide and use Group-IB’s cyber threat analysis technologies, backed by more than 30 patents globally.
Analysts using Group-IB Digital Risk Protection have access to a fully automated Group-IB network graph for instant data correlation and linking attacks to specific criminal groups. Graph analysis helps find related elements of criminal infrastructure, such as dormant domains that attackers are preparing to use or web pages targeting other brands, greatly enhancing monitoring results and helping prevent fraud.
For automated detection and classification of various types of violations, Group-IB Digital Risk Protection uses neural networks and multiple scoring systems, which are constantly updated by Group-IB analysts. With Group-IB DRP, 85% of brand abuse violations are resolved pre-trial.
Expert Commentary
“The Innovation Excellence award from Frost & Sullivan is a major milestone for the DRP team and Group-IB as a whole,” says Andrey Busargin, Deputy CEO of Group-IB for Global Risk Protection. “With the growing threat of personalized online fraud and brand abuse, DRP solutions must be highly adaptable to each client. The Group-IB Digital Risk Protection system is built on the expertise of our DRP analysts, who constantly enrich the product with data on new fraud trends targeting specific industries. DRP enables clients to effectively manage external digital risks with a set of tools needed to monitor any violations in real time.”