An annual retail crime survey from the British Retail Consortium has found that 53% of retail fraud in the United Kingdom comes from online sources such as phishing, data breaches and digital theft of customer data, totaling 100 million pounds in losses. Of the 1.1 million retail employees surveyed, half believed cybercrimes were one of the most significant future threats in their industry and 91 percent believed the total number of cyberattacks is increasing or staying constant.
Respondents were more positive about their ability to fight these threats. Over three-quarters of respondents feel they have a manageable ability to find and hire staff with cybersecurity expertise and nearly all respondents said their organization provides cybersecurity training. This is encouraging, since data breaches are less likely to occur if employees are trained to notice the warning signs for phishing emails, social engineering scams and other attacks.
Although these finding focus on the UK specifically, digital retail fraud is a serious issue in the United States as well. Since the 2015 implementation of EMV chip-enabled credit and debit cards in the US, online credit card fraud has increased, especially over major holiday shopping periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Many experts believe that attackers are shifting their tactics to target online shopping now that EMV has make card-present fraud much more difficult.
Read more about the UK retail fraud survey at SC Magazine and see the data itself here.