Posted by Bengaluru: More than one in three login attempts in APAC were flagged as high or critical risk (36.4%), exceeding the global average of 26.6%, according to new research from Akamai, a cloud company.
With 36.4% login attempts, the APAC region recorded the second-highest proportion of login attempts globally, behind Latin America (37.8%), and ahead of North America (23.6%) and EMEA (23.7%). The stats in research emphasised on the need for stronger identity protection as cybercriminals increasingly target the entry points businesses rely on every day.
Published in Akamai’s latest State of the Internet (SOTI) Security report, AI-Driven Digital Deception: The Fraud and Abuse Report 2026, the findings highlight how cybercriminals are exploiting the login stage as a key entry point for account abuse.
Globally, account verification requests accounted for 40% of high or critical risk login activity, potentially indicating attempts to validate accounts before launching credential stuffing attacks. These risk classifications indicate potentially malicious activity, rather than confirmed successful attacks.
The report also reveals how artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are enabling more sophisticated fraud tactics to outpace traditional perimeter defences, leading to a structural shift in cybercrime.
- Scams surpassed phishing: Global online scam detections doubled year-over-year from 3.2 million to 6.4 million, overtaking traditional phishing for the first time in Q1 2026 as attackers prioritise immediate financial fraud over long-term credential theft.
- Attack lifespan reduced in half: The average operational window of phishing campaigns dropped from 48.3 days in Q4 2025 to just 22 days in Q2 2026, severely compressing the time security teams have to detect and neutralise threats.
Financial Services : APAC’s Most Targeted Industry
Among all the login attempts in APAC, financial services emerged as a top targeted industry with banking (6.4%) and fintech (6.1%) together accounting for 12.5% of observed attack activity. Malware, advanced persistent threats, ransomware and botnets were among the primary threats observed across the region.
Akamai’s threat intelligence underscores how modern attackers pair brute-force automation with targeted stealth. In July 2026, researchers tracked simultaneous attacks against a major APAC financial institution that deployed dual tactics:
- Reconnaissance at scale: An automated barrage of 42,000 requests over seven days designed to mass-validate credential databases for resale or subsequent takeover.
- Low-and-Slow account creation: A precision attempt to create just 164 requests engineered to bypass threshold-based rate limits and establish synthetic identities or money-muling accounts.
Cybercriminals are also tailoring scams to local behaviours. In Southeast Asia, researchers analysed 2,157 URLs linked to campaigns that used travel-related searches to redirect users to regional gambling platforms. These campaigns targeted cryptocurrency investors, financial institutions, consumer brands, and commerce businesses for credential theft, payment fraud, and account takeover.
“Fraudsters are getting better at hiding in plain sight. What looks like a routine login, a new account or a small payment could be part of a larger attack, with AI and automation making these schemes easier to scale and blend in,” said Reuben Koh, Director of Security Technology and Strategy, APJ – Akamai.
“The challenge for businesses is that suspicious activity does not always look suspicious in isolation. Organisations need to connect the dots across the entire customer journey to identify fraudulent intent early, while ensuring that legitimate customers can continue to transact seamlessly,” added Koh.