Asian banks must accept they are more susceptible as the initial target for fraudulent payments, as well as the receivers, with over 83 per cent of cases based in the region.
SWIFT has released a new report showing how closer industry collaboration has resulted in faster identification of financial institutions targeted by cyber criminals.
For example, after initially penetrating its defences, many attackers operate ‘silently’ for weeks, or even months, to study behaviours and patterns to discover more about their target’s vulnerability.
Malicious actors that have previously favoured issuing fraudulent payments outside business hours to avoid detection have more recently been instead acting during business hours to blend in with legitimate traffic.
SWIFT also found that fraudulent transactions are increasingly coming in from new payment corridors – combinations of target and beneficiary banks – that were not being used previously.
In most cases, the target banks have been located in countries with high risk ratings on the Basel AML Country Corruption List, and tended to be smaller banks in terms of cross-border flows.
The report also reveals that the value of each…
