A new ThreatMetrix report says the security company has uncovered 130 million fraudulent attacks from January to March and found that the volume of digital wallet transactions increased 80 percent on a year-over-year basis.
ThreatMetrix said Thursday it evaluated cyber crimes that the ThreatMetrix Digital Identity Network detected during the first quarter of 2017 and found that the number of cyber attacks that originated from Europe is 50 percent more than the attacks that emerged from the U.S. during the same three-month period.
The Q1 2017 Cybercrime Report also showed that the U.K. emerged as one of the top largest originators of such crimes with attacks targeted at the U.S., Australia, Ireland and Austria.
ThreatMetrix also found a 180 percent increase in related bot attacks to perform mass identity testing as well as prevalence of Remote Access Trojan-related attacks in the financial services sector over the 90-day period.
“All of this points to one thing: Identities are the critical currency in cyber crime this year and it is up to businesses to look beyond static data to check that users are who they say they are,†said Vanita Pandey, vice president of product marketing at ThreatMetrix.
The report also noted a 400 percent increase in global mobile transactions in the past two years and that Europe accounted for 51 percent of all mobile transactions in the first quarter of 2017.