Okta reports dramatic increase in cyber-attacks

A marketing survey from digital identity firm Okta fielded in the first quarter of last year highlights dangers that, while hardly unknown, are sobering.

The survey and report examined the state of secure identity, and came up with three facts the market needs to come to grips with.

First, Okta staff saw 300 million attempted fraudulent account registrations. That equals 23 percent of all signup tries, according to the company. It was just 15 percent during the first quarter of 2021.

Most heavily hit were the financial services and energy/utilities industries.

Okta says its security researchers came by their insights after running simple and anonymous queries against its aggregate database of operational telemetry. Industry segmentations are based on each customer’s self-reported segment.

The second highlight insight is that attacks involving credential-stuffing are “on a record pace,” according to the company report. Eighty percent of logins in retail/e-commerce involved stuffing in the early days of 2022. Financial services and entertainment did not get off too much easier.

Ten billion credential-stuffing attacks occurred during that period, and most ID attacks in Southeast Asia are stuffings.

And last, criminals are targeting multi-factor authentication defenses. Signup attacks in the Asia-Pacific region have been overtaken by multi-factor attacks, according to Okta.

Article Topics

cybersecurity  |  digital identity  |  fraud prevention  |  identity access management (IAM)  |  market report  |  multi-factor authentication  |  Okta