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The annual cost of fraud in the UK could be as high as £193bn a year, far higher than a government estimate of £50bn. That is the finding in the latest Annual Fraud Indicator report, based on research from Portsmouth University. And one of the largest growing fraud vectors is digital fraud.

"The global threat environment is rapidly changing, and the growing size and scope of breaches and exposure of personally identifiable information (PII) is concerning, because it can expose people to significant fraud," points out Lisa Baergen, director at NuData Security. "Individual point solutions for fraud prevention fail to deliver the visibility needed to protect financial institutions from threats posed by an increasingly complex world of cyber crime."

This year, fraudsters are leveraging more sophisticated attack vectors, focusing increasingly on account takeover and account creation, NuData Security has determined. "In 2015, we identified 45.95% of accounts created, across our financial institution and e-commerce clients, as fraudulent attempts against customers of some of the largest banks and merchants globally," Baergen adds.

"This was a 66% increase in account creation fraud since 2014, when the rate was 27% of all accounts. This shows us that thieves are beginning to value user accounts, with related details of payment information attached, more highly. "The good news is that the power of behavioural attributes can now be harnessed to verify the authentic users.

"Behavioural analysis serves as a means of understanding how legitimate users truly act without interrupting their experience, thereby predicting and preventing fraud from occurring. Becoming complacent in an age of massive data breaches is both a financial and reputational hazard," she adds.

Rob Norris, director of enterprise & cyber security in EMEIA at Fujitsu, says the fact that the cost of fraud in the UK could be as high as £193bn is no surprise. "You just need to look at the amount of companies being hit by attacks to see the growth of fraud and malicious intent. Criminals seek money and companies have it – it's as simple as that.

"To combat this growing risk, it's vital both consumers and organisations take a proactive approach when it comes to security. Organisations need to focus on the integration of threat intelligence and other information sources to provide the context necessary to deal with today's advanced cyber criminals.

"As the number of these threats continues to increase exponentially, no business, nor consumer, can afford for cyber security not to be their number one priority," he warns.