What are the different types of account take over fraud?

Account take over fraud scenario is rapidly increasing, and nearly 100 attacks per second are happening worldwide signifying the impact of this attack.

Firms around the world are transforming from a traditional brick and mortar model of business to online business. On the positive side, the internet bloomed over the years, reaping up more growth opportunities and helps to target customers looking for specific services. Companies are following cybersecurity guidelines with stringent standards to prevent themselves from getting caught in any cybersecurity issues. Still, the scenario is the same for businesses turning tides with an increased number of cyberattacks every hour.  

Let’s look into one of the most common cybersecurity issues, account take over fraud and how multi factor authentication solutions can help with this type of attack.

What is account take over fraud?

Account take over fraud is where a fraudster or hacker illegally takes over another person’s account by disguising themselves as the victim and access the account with legitimate credentials of the affected person. The account take over fraud is similar to identity theft where the hacker accesses the system and creates a new account, but in account take over the hacker pretends as the victim by using the same account. 

Did you know that account take over fraud is increasing by 31% every single year? This fraud occurs through bots making it near impossible to track.

What are the types of account take over fraud?

Account take over fraud affects both businesses and customers. But businesses suffer the most because they face financial loss and gain a bad reputation from customers. These types of attacks can happen anywhere from secured applications to social media pages creating havoc in its wake.

Let’s jump to see the different ways in which this fraud can occur,

Data breach:

Here user credentials like the password are stolen by unknown sources, and hackers threaten the companies by exposing them to dark web or public. Most of the data breach happens by brute force attack where a hacker gains system access through force.

Credential stuffing:

Credential stuffing occurs when users use the same user id, password for multiple sites. Hackers breach user credentials with the help of bots and try to hack, hoping that users might use the same password here though it can be identified by continuous login attempts from the same HTTP site.

Phishing:

Phishing happens through emails or text messages that come from unidentified sources. Phishers take the URL’s of well-known firms and make small changes to include it in the mail and steal credentials when a user opens the mail.

How can multi factor authentication solutions help?

With the increasing number of data breaches, multi factor authentication solutions are suggested by the experts as the best way to access a platform securely.  

As the name suggests, multi factor authentication solutions ask for multiple options to provide access for a person. The first authentication will be a regular user name and password credentials stage. In the second stage, OTP’s is sent to the users through text or email messages to gain further access. The second stage is where most hackers fail to get authenticated to gain access to the system making multi factor authentication an invincible solution.

A good cyber identity access management system like Cybernexa combats accounts to take over frauds with a streamlined multi-factor authentication model, thereby providing the unshakable and reliable access to businesses and customers ceaselessly.