Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Reducing payment fraud risk requires giving existing fraud controls enough context to distinguish higher-risk interactions from routine activity, rather than applying more checks to every customer. That distinction matters. UK Finance reported that criminals stole almost £1.3 billion through authorized and unauthorized fraud in the UK during 2025. Authorized push payment fraud alone accounted for £576.4 million, up 19% year over year.

Fraud doesn’t wait for your investigation queue. Every minute an alert sits unresolved gives fraudsters more time to move the money. Yet at most financial institutions, a single case still takes an analyst 10 to 30 minutes to investigate — pulling transaction history, checking device and behavioral data, weighing risk signals and documenting a decision. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of alerts a day, and slow investigation isn’t just an inconvenience.

Attackers are using “wrong-number” texts to identify potential targets for scams, according to researchers at Malwarebytes. These texts appear to be harmless messages meant for another person, such as “Are we still on for dinner tomorrow?” or “Where’s the PowerPoint?” Recipients often try to be helpful by replying to let the person know they’ve got the wrong number.

Phishing infrastructure is built to be thrown away. When a domain gets blocklisted, scrutinized, or too hot to handle, the attackers don't stop. They just move. To them, a domain extension is just a cheap tool. They go wherever it is easiest to strike. That pattern is visible in our own telemetry. In late 2024 and early 2025, KnowBe4 Threat Lab documented a 98% spike in phishing campaigns abusing.ru domains. 1,500 unique domains, over 13,000 malicious emails, with an average domain age of just 7.4 days.

Fraud against rail operators extends well beyond fare dodging. CYJAX breaks down how compensation scheme abuse, insider fraud and Telegram marketplaces for discounted tickets are combining to create a persistent revenue threat across the UK rail sector.

Brand Impersonation protection software should do more than find and remove impersonating assets. Buyers should also examine what a platform helps their organization understand and do about the customer and business risk created while the campaign remains active. The Anti-Phishing Working Group recorded 971,181 phishing attacks in Q1 2026, up 13.8% from the previous quarter. Across monitored social platforms, impersonation accounted for 43.8% of threats. Takedown is necessary.

A study has found that AI chatbots can be more effective at social engineering than human scammers, WIRED reports. The researchers looked at a form of romance scam commonly known as “pig butchering,” in which scammers spend weeks or months building a relationship with the victim before tricking them into sending money for a phony investment scheme.