The financial services industry remains a prime target for brand impersonation scams, with phishing emails and websites impersonating financial institutions making up a third of online traffic to counterfeit domains, the cloud platform provider Akamai said in a recent report on cyberattack trends.
Brand abuse takes many forms, including lookalike sites that replicate a company’s exact logo and design, fraudulent apps, and fake social media profiles mimicking official corporate accounts, according to Akamai. The company identified and tallied online traffic to suspicious domains over a one-year period starting in 2023. Suspicious domains faking financial services firms accounted for more than 36% of all traffic in that time frame. By comparison, the second most impersonated industry — commerce — accounted for 26% of suspicious domains.
“Financial institutions are seen as highly trusted entities, making them prime targets for fraudsters who exploit that trust,” Akamai said. “By impersonating these institutions, attackers deceive users into willingly handing over their credentials, leveraging the institution’s reputation to make their scams more convincing and effective.”
