Are businesses too confident in their ability to fight identity fraud? Recent data suggests they might be. While many European businesses believe they’re effectively addressing the issue, many don’t consistently track its impact.
According to The Battle in the Dark 2025 survey by Signicat and Red Goat Cyber Security, only 5% of respondents expressed a lack of confidence in their identity fraud processes. Around three-quarters believe they are winning the fight—despite the fact that 47% don’t track fraud consistently.
“Part of the problem with fraud is you can’t detect what you aren’t aware of or aren’t looking for,” said Jennifer Pitt, Senior Analyst of Fraud Management at Javelin Strategy & Research. “If consumers are not reporting fraud for a number of reasons, it creates the illusion that whatever fraud controls the organization has are working.”
A Growing Problem
Those confidence numbers are even more out of sync given that European businesses estimate that one in five transactions are fraudulent. Identity fraud and its associated costs impact up to 22% of their annual revenue.
And these numbers continue to grow. Signicat’s data shows that identity fraud attempts have increased by 69% over the past four years, with overall fraud attempts up 88%.
Difficult to Detect
Identity fraud accounted for 9.3% of all fraud attempts so far this year, making it the most common type of fraud in Europe. Account takeover and social engineering were the second and third most prevalent methods. The study found that ID fraud was the most common in the banking industry, while in the payments industry, the most common fraud tactic is account takeover.
“Certain types of fraud, like account takeover and synthetic identity fraud, are more difficult to detect, and organizations might not even know it’s happening,” said Pitt. “Some of these organizations may rely solely on one fraud detection method, rather than using a layered approach that is needed to combat the more sophisticated types of fraud.”
The study also found that 80% of businesses believe pushing back against criminals only prompts them to change their tactics. This constant innovation remains a key challenge in the fighting against fraud.
“Fraud is evolving faster than detection systems can keep up,” Pitt said. “Organizations still relying on legacy and static detection methods, which may be missing newer and more sophisticated fraud threats. Ironically, this lack of detection gives a false sense that their detection methods are working, when in fact, fraud is going undetected.”
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