Financial Services Industry Experiences a Massive Increase in Brand Abuse

Industry analysis of the domains used behind phishing and brand impersonation attacks show financial institutions are being leveraged at an alarming rate.

It’s one thing to see your industry at the top of some “state of” cybersecurity report, but it’s entirely different to learn that 68% of all phishing web pages identified in a single quarter are from your industry.

That’s exactly what we find in Akamai’s latest analysis of websites across the Internet.  According to the reported details, domains impersonating businesses in the financial services sector is overwhelmingly the industry of choice at the moment:

• Of all domains used for phishing, 68% of them were related to financial institutions (with every other industry fitting into the remaining 32%!)
• Of all domains used specifically for brand impersonation, approximately 28% impersonated financial institutions, which was the top industry in the list

Akamai points the finger at the emergence of phishing-as-a-service platforms and similar toolkits that have lowered the barrier to entry for the everyday cybercriminal.  With pre-built websites made to look like financial institutions around the world, these types of platforms make it easy to target individuals by impersonating their bank, etc.

The only way for potential victims to stay clear of such attacks is to see the socially-engineered emails, texts, and voicemails that launch these attacks for what they are via new-school security awareness training.

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