As we enter a global economic downturn, rates of cybercrime will naturally increase, including online fraud. In fact, in 2021 it was reported that consumers lost $5.9 billion to fraud, which was an increase of over 70% on the previous year.
In this new research, SEON investigates the most common types of fraud faced by countries around the world, ranks each country in terms of cybercrime budget and outlines how an economic recession could impact the risk of cybercrime overall.
The company has discovered that the top three countries who lose the most money to cybercrime are South Korea, the USA and Germany respectively, with the United Kingdom coming in at number 15.
Other key findings include:
- In the UK the most common type of fraud was reputational damage due to third-party relationship, with high causes being the lack of in-house checks in security.
- The US loses $4,100,000,000 to cybercrime per annum.
- Disruptions due to sanctions and changes in trade agreement is the most common type of fraud in the US and Italy.
With an economic downturn advancing, other findings in this report showcase fraud levels after the 2008 recession, with 55.4% of survey respondents noticing an increase in the number of fraudulent transactions during March 2009 compared to the previous year.
Anyone can fall victim to hackers, fraudsters, scammers and other online criminals, from employees to small businesses and even large corporations, and cybersecurity awareness and prevention is essential for any company, especially in a time of economic uncertainty.
This is why SEON has released this research to help create awareness, and in turn prevention, against the on-going battle against fraudsters. SEON is committed to fighting all forms of fraud and at a time where online transactions are increasing, fraud education and prevention is becoming more critical.
Please find the full piece of research by SEON here: https://seon.io/resources/countries-with-the-biggest-cybercrime-budgets/
