Financial cyber threats targeting businesses in ME surge by 286%

DUBAI, Oct 9: According to Kaspersky’s Financial Cyber threats report, attacks are becoming increasingly corporate rather than consumer focused. As it’s seen from Kaspersky Security Network, financial threat detections targeting businesses were growing in the Middle East in Q2, 2022. Financial phishing aimed at organizations also stay high.

Business-related financial threat detections increased nearly fourfold in the Middle East in Q2 – by 286% comparing to the previous quarter. These detections are specific to Banking Trojans, which is a malware commonly used to steal data stored or processed through online banking systems, e-payment systems and plastic card systems. This growth was mostly due to an upward trajectory in financial threat detections in Egypt, UAE, Kuwait and Oman, while Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar witnessed a decrease in the same type of threats.

Financial Phishing is another deceptive way of stealing information, and is gaining momentum in the region. Phishing is a type of online fraud where the scammer sends fake alerts from banks, e-pay systems and other organizations to trick consumers into sharing their financial details. The alerts sent by the scammer can be related to loss of data, update credentials or system breakdown, which results in theft of passwords, credit card numbers, bank account details and other confidential information. According to the Kaspersky telemetry, in the first half of 2022, a total of 58,223 financial phishing attacks aimed at organizations were detected and blocked by Kaspersky solutions in Kuwait. More than half of them (55%) were targeting online shopping outlets, while 36% were for payment systems such as PayPal, Apple Pay and others, and 9% were against banks in the country.

“A life without Internet is strange to us. So much, that our financial life is now digital. This is the magic of digitization. But we also need to be aware of an unprecedented wave of challenges. Financial threat is one such challenge which is becoming more advanced in exploiting human behavior and will only continue to grow. Businesses trying to stay ahead of such evolving, complex cyber attacks should make fraud prevention a focal point to control fraud transactions, eventually reduce fraud risk in the future and avoid reputation damage” said Emad Haffar, Head of Technical Experts at Kaspersky.

To help businesses stay ahead of financial threats and Phishing attacks, Kaspersky recommends the following:

• Educate employees as they are considered the first line of cyber defence. Make it a continuous learning experience and teach them about the red flags they need to keep an eye out for. Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform (KASAP) can support companies at every step of their corporate security awareness journey, from goal-setting to results evaluation.

• Similarly, extend the dos and don’ts of cybersecurity to your customers so that protect themselves against falling victim to Phishing fraud.

• Use the Kaspersky Fraud Prevention solution, which proactively analyzes and detects whether a customer’s device is infected with malware in realtime.

• Organizations should rely on Kaspersky Threat Intelligence to increase visibility and feed its security operations with advanced insights.