Growth of Digital Commerce Leads to Explosion of External Attack Surface, Fueling 1.5X increase in Online Fraud in 2021

Bolster research shows that fraud campaigns are at the highest levels since start of COVID pandemic

LOS ALTOS, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Bolster Inc., a deep learning-powered fraud prevention company protecting the world’s leading brands, today published its 2022 State of Phishing and Online Fraud Report and companion Global Fraud Index. The analysis shows an unprecedented level of fraud activity, spurred by the continuing growth of digital commerce, leading to an explosion of companies’ external attack surfaces.

Using data gathered from analyzing more than one billion sites, the 2022 State of Phishing and Online Fraud Report highlights the trends that drove digital scams in 2021. In this, the company’s third year of tracking phishing and scam data, we can see with no uncertainty how the pandemic has impacted, and in fact accelerated, digital adoption and, as a result, cyber fraud.

“As companies accelerate their digital first strategies, bad actors are more active than ever, targeting employees, customers, and company supply chains,” said Shashi Prakash, chief technology officer and co-founder at Bolster. “Our data clearly shows that companies need to do more to protect external attack vectors such as malicious sites, social media, and mobile app stores, which many security teams do not regularly monitor or have the expertise to remediate.”

Global fraud and scam activity is at an all-time high, and the growth is expected to continue into 2022. The digital-first strategy has also expanded the number of attack vectors criminals can target, including websites, social media, marketplaces and mobile app stores. Other key findings from Bolster’s 2022 State of Phishing and Online Fraud Report include:

• Accelerated growth in online fraud globally. In 2021, the total number of phishing and counterfeit pages increased 1.5X over 2020 to a total of more than 10.5 million — and it continues to grow in 2022.
• Threats soar on a daily basis. The average number of phishing and counterfeit pages detected per day in 2021 increased to over 29,000, up from 19,000 per day in 2020.
• Fraudsters capitalize on explosive growth of digital-based services. Phishing and scam attacks more than quadrupled for the SaaS, Communications, Gaming, and Streaming industries—all of which experienced an uptick in adoption resulting from both work-from-home and stay-at-home conditions.
• External attack surface has no geographic boundaries. Fraudulent activity also grew in scope in 2021 as the top countries hosting malicious sites expanded. The United States, Russia, Germany, and Netherlands made both lists but were accompanied by an additional six countries in 2021 versus just one in 2020.

The full report can be downloaded here: 2022 State of Phishing and Online Fraud Report

Against this backdrop it’s critical for online businesses to adopt modern brand protection practices. Businesses must not only address an ever-expanding external attack surface rife with fraud, but they need to do so at the speed and scale that threat actors now operate. Many are turning to their InfoSec teams to head up brand protection initiatives, armed with AI and automation technologies to properly fight scale with scale.

Bolster Global Fraud Index

As a companion to the report, Bolster also launched their Global Fraud Index providing a combination of monthly measurements plus daily threat data. The Global Fraud Index indexes monthly threat data to January 2020 with a baseline value of 1,000, to provide a relative measure for phishing and scam activities from pre-pandemic levels to the present.

The data reveals the effects both COVID and accelerated digital transformation initiatives have had on fueling online fraud around the world. The Bolster Global Fraud Index is updated monthly and also features daily threat data including daily phishing and scam counts plus breakdowns by category, hosting provider, top-level domain, and geolocation.

Resources

Bolster 2022 State of Phishing & Online Fraud Report
Bolster Global Fraud Index
FREE Domain Risk Report
Bolster Fraud Prevention Solution
Bolster Brand Protection Solution

About Bolster

Bolster, Inc. helps companies protect their external attack surface with its AI platform that provides Internet scale monitoring, detection, and automated remediation of threats propagated through fake websites, social media platforms, mobile app stores, marketplaces, and the dark web. By automating the work of hundreds of analysts, the AI platform reduces a security team’s workload, accelerates threat detection, and provides remediation expertise. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Los Altos, California, the company comprises a team of security experts from leading security companies including Cisco, Symantec, McAfee, Bell Labs, and OpenDNS

Bolster Inc. is also the creator of CheckPhish.ai, a freely available platform for identifying phishing and scam activities in real-time. Try it for free at: www.checkphish.ai

Follow Bolster: LinkedIn and Twitter @BolsterAI.

Contacts

Media Contact:
Young-Sae Song

Marketing

pr-inquiry@bolster.ai