A BIG portion of human-initiated cyber attacks in the first half came from the Philippines, which is now included among the top 10 countries in the world where digital threats originate.
According to LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ January to June 2021 Cybercrime Report, the Philippines ranked 6th in terms of volume of human-initiated cyber attacks during the period. The list of top contributors include (in order) the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Japan and Russia.
“The growth in attack volume from the Philippines was largely driven by a credit card testing attack targeting a payment gateway in March,” the US-based data and analytics firm said.
The Philippines and Russia replaced India and Netherlands on the list amid the surging cases of cyber attacks.
LexisNexis noted that human-initiated attacks across the globe declined by 9 percent to 236 million in the first half.
Most of these targeted mobile users at 54 percent, the remainder was for computer users.
Meanwhile, automated bot attacks surged by 41 percent to 1.2 billion. More than half of these were aimed at financial services.
“High-velocity automated attacks that typically mass-test stolen identity credentials on a particular use case, originating from a machine or series of machines, have grown across
financial services and media organizations,” the firm noted.
Digital payments
LexisNexis also noted that the digital payments continued to increase as more consumers adapted to digital platforms. The number of transactions processed in the first half rose by 28 percent to 28.7 billion year-on-year.
Bulk or 68 percent of the transactions was through mobile, while the remainder was via computer.
“Online transactions have continued their upward trajectory, with particularly strong growth recorded across logins and payments, indicating that consumers are relying on existing relationships with trusted brands more than ever before,” the firm shared.
“The online payment market continues to proliferate and diversify, with buy-now-pay-later [BNPL] services and digital wallets becoming increasingly popular ways to pay,” it added. “This growth is likely to continue to cater for the growing population of consumers who are transacting more online.”
In the Asia-Pacific region, the Philippines also topped the list of attack originations. Along with it are Japan, India, Pakistan and China.
Automated bot attack volume rose by 86 percent while human-initiated cyber attacks dropped by 8 percent in the region during the period. The number of transactions processed surged by 60 percent to 2.3 billion.