Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

From real-time payment (RTP) scams to account takeovers to card testing, Visa reports that 98% of merchants experienced one or more types of fraud in 2025. No wonder it has gone down in history as the year these crimes exploded in scope. So what does 2026 have in store? According to the INETCO Team, the coming months will see payment fraud evolve like never before — into something more autonomous and far harder for banks and payment processors to detect using traditional approaches.

Adoption fraud can target hopeful families. Discover common scams, warning signs, and how to protect your adoption journey. Adoption fraud can blindside even the most prepared families, especially when emotions run high. Understanding common adoption scams and how to stay safe can help you move forward with more peace of mind. Adoption fraud is a scam in which someone uses deception to extract money, gifts, or emotional leverage from people hoping to adopt.

Digital fraud hasn’t stood still. Attackers have adopted automation, refined tooling, and improved coordination across phishing, impersonation, and account takeover (ATO). In that sense, fraud has become smarter in how it’s delivered and scaled. But this form of sophistication isn’t primarily about more complex technical breaches, and it doesn’t explain why losses continue to rise even as enterprises deploy increasingly advanced security controls.

That question reflects a growing reality inside airline security teams. Account takeover is no longer a downstream fraud event. It is an access-layer problem driven by adversaries who specialize in impersonation, reverse proxies, and rapid monetization of loyalty accounts. For Cyber Threat Intelligence teams, the mission is not to clean up after fraud. It is to disrupt adversary capability early, attribute campaigns accurately, and break the kill chain before customer harm occurs.

Globally, companies lost an average of 7.7% of their annual revenue to fraud, according to TransUnion’s 2025 Digital Identity Risk Accelerates Fraud Losses report. In the US, companies reported revenue losses of 9.8%, a 46% increase from the previous year. That’s hundreds of billions of dollars heading into the hands of fraudsters. And those stats don’t account for the loss of trust, hit to brand reputation, and time and resources spent on mitigating and resolving the fraud.

An identity mule is someone who is compensated for sharing their identity. They may be asked for pictures of their identification documents and video selfies. Or, instructed to create an account and complete an identity verification flow before handing over the account’s credentials to a bad actor. The fraud cat-and-mouse game is taking a new turn. As organizations get better at detecting deepfakes, some bad actors are using real people’s identities to commit fraud.

Let’s be honest: in 2026, the traditional “firewall” is a bit of a relic. Having spent years analyzing how threat actors operate, I can tell you they aren’t banging on your front door anymore. Why would they? It’s much easier to build a pixel-perfect replica of your front door down the street and trick your customers into handing over their keys there.

All over the world, companies are seeing a rise in fake job applicants. You may have experienced it yourself: dozens of near-identical resumes arriving within hours, or candidates who refuse to turn on their camera during video interviews. Remote hiring, global talent pools, AI-generated resumes, and increasingly sophisticated fraud networks have profoundly changed the hiring landscape. Traditional hiring processes were never built to defend against the types of candidate fraud we’re seeing today.

From fake ads to tech support fraud, see how scammers exploit Facebook and how to protect your data and money. Facebook may feel like a safe place to connect, but scammers are increasingly using its ads, posts, and messages to deceive users. Here’s how cybercriminals are turning your feed into a gateway for fraud and what you can do to stay protected. When you open Facebook, you might expect birthday alerts, travel snapshots, or quick messages with friends.