One million daily cyber attacks expected over Christmas

UK retailers are expected to see a “dangerous spike” in cyber fraud over the peak Christmas shopping period, according to recent data from online fraud prevention company, ThreatMetrix.

It is predicting that there will be 50 million online attacks globally over “Hack Friday” and “Cybercrime Monday” week, and more than 20 million cyber attacks are expected to target online retailers and shoppers in the UK alone, across the last quarter of the year.

ThreatMetrix predicts that there will be a 60 percent increase in fraudulent e-commerce transactions in Q4 2016 compared to Q4 2015 and that most attacks will be on transactions with a 70 percent higher than average ticket size.

Vanita Pandey, vice president, strategy and product marketing at ThreatMetrix, said: “Fraudsters are using the holiday shopping period to target high-value items, such as mobile technology, game consoles and consumer electronics.

“We’ve seen the types of attacks evolve in sophistication as cyber criminals become more targeted with their approach. We expect the number of fraudulent attempts on e-commerce sites to be 60 percent higher than the same period in 2015.”

The final quarter of the year is always a key time for fraudsters to attack as they take advantage of the busy Christmas shopping period when IT teams are generally busier than usual, hoping to slip through systems unnoticed due to the high volume of transactions.