Account takeover (ATO) attacks are on the rise, and businesses without protection are facing significant financial consequences, as well as potentially irreparable reputational damage. This fast-increasing type of cybercrime involves criminals getting hold of your customers’ information, your sensitive business data, and even gaining control of your systems and platforms.
Putting right the damage caused by an ATO attack is time-consuming and costly. Experts estimate that it takes a business around eleven months and thousands (if not millions) of dollars to repair the situation. This could entail compensating customers, rebuilding online systems, and investigating the breach. Deploying an effective account takeover solution is vital to guard against this.
What are Account Takeover Solutions?
ATO solutions are tools specifically designed to mitigate, detect, and prevent unauthorized access to your business accounts and platforms. These tools monitor for illegitimate log-in attempts, looking at things like behavioral abnormalities, device fingerprints, login velocity, and IP reputation.
The best ATO solutions don’t just focus on mitigating an attack once it’s in place, but on proactively preventing an attack from getting started in the first place. This type of software typically takes a three-pronged approach, identifying potential threats before they can escalate, evaluating the legitimacy of login attempts, and monitoring sessions for anomalies. Together, this provides a formidable defense against APO attempts.
Why Every Business Needs an Effective Account Takeover Solution
There are many important reasons that all businesses need an effective account takeover solution in place as part of their cybersecurity strategy. These include:
- Helps prevent significant financial losses, potential site downtime, and loss of customer trust.
- Maintains regulatory compliance and lowers the risk of incurring penalties or fines.
- Most ATO solutions also incorporate protection from other types of cybercrime, such as credential stuffing.
- Reduces customer support costs and the burden on a business’s customer service team.
- Lowers customer attrition and improves brand reputation.
- Creates an overall enhancement to security levels and complements overarching fraud prevention strategies.
When choosing an ATO solution, it’s a good idea to first consider your business’s specific risk profile. This means thinking about your industry’s common vector attacks and threat landscape, and assessing the types of data and accounts that require protection.
Key Features You Need in an Account Takeover Solution
Not all ATO solutions are built equal. Choosing a high-quality option that offers consistent protection – and suits your business’s needs – is vital. Here are the things to take into account.
Does the Solution Offer Real-Time Threat Detection?
The best ATO solutions identify threats in advance, rather than just swinging into action once an attack is underway. Look for an option that offers advanced, real-time threat detection to preempt a damaging account takeover attack. Solutions that leverage AI and machine learning to continually learn about and adapt to new and emerging threats are generally recommended.
Does the Solution Deploy Behavioral Analytics?
A great ATO solution will incorporate advanced tools that continually assess user behavior – not just at the point of login but during their entire session. The ability to accurately detect an anomaly is the key to taking swift preventative action.
Will the Solution Help Your Business Stay Compliant?
Helping to keep your business on the right side of regulatory and compliance laws is one of the advantages of having an ATO solution in place. Ensure the one you choose meets industry-specific privacy and data handling regulations.
Does the Solution Impact the User Experience?
Your business needs protection from an ATO attack, but this shouldn’t come at the expense of the user experience. Prevent losing visitors by making sure that the solution you deploy doesn’t negatively impact the experience of legitimate users.
Is the Solution Scalable?
A crucial question to ask of any ATO solution you’re considering is whether it can grow with your business. Look for an option that can be easily scaled when the time comes, without any loss of performance.
Does the Solution Offer Comprehensive Analytic and Reporting Tools?
To help prevent an ATO attack, it’s vital to see where your online vulnerabilities currently lie and how to enhance your security. A great solution should be able to do this, as well as provide you with the information you need, should the worst happen and an attack be successful, to help ensure it doesn’t occur again.
What is the Solution’s Customer Service Like?
In the event of a crisis, you need to be confident you can get hold of assistance, fast. To this end, pay careful attention to the solution’s customer service provision. Is it available 24/7, and is there a variety of ways to get in touch for assistance? Looking at plenty of customer reviews can help figure out how well the company does on this score.
Top 5 Account Takeover Solutions
1. Signifyd
Benefits: Businesses looking for large-scale, network-wide fraud protection.
Signifyd may be a good choice for large-scale ecommerce businesses that need network-wide fraud intelligence to stop repeat ATO offenders in their tracks. The platform’s global network analyzes thousands of merchants and billions of transactions to identify unusual behavior. This means that, if cybercriminals steal credentials from one retailer, all the other merchants in the network can be alerted, and these credentials flagged.
2. DataDome
Benefits: Businesses seeking powerful real-time protection that adapts to emerging threats.
This solution is a powerful, AI-fuelled option that leverages machine learning to offer real-time protection from ATO attacks and a wide range of other cyberthreats. DataDome Account Takeover Protection defends all digital experiences, not just a business’s website, including mobile apps and APIs, without any detriment to user experience. Its Account Protect feature integrates with your business’s current authentication processes to protect your site and accounts automatically and is easy to deploy, too.
3. Memcyco
Benefits: Businesses that need predictive ATO prevention, especially those in high-risk industries.
Businesses in high-risk industries (such as finance) may be especially interested in Memcyco’s ATO prevention software, which offers predictive, real-time protection from ATO attacks. By detecting and disrupting pre-attack activities, such as the setting up of phishing sites, Memcyco is easy to deploy across customer portals, websites, and mobile apps.
4. Forter
Benefits: Businesses looking for an easy-to-implement solution that uses behavioral analytics and risk scoring.
Forter uses AI to undertake risk scoring and assess behavioral patterns to spot suspicious activities and block fraudulent login attempts before any damage is caused. Businesses that want real-time protection at both the transaction and login level may find this option a good fit for their needs. Forter offers a comprehensive range of support resources, such as step-by-step integration guides, documents detailing best practices, and events and conferences, where business leaders discuss the future of digital commerce.
5. Telesign
Benefits: Businesses that want identity-based ATO protection.
Telesign’s focus is on identity-based ATO prevention, and the solution leverages behavioral biometrics, real-time risk scoring, and phone intelligence. Users appreciate how the software allows them to create customized authentication workflows and deploy enhanced security when necessary. This option may be useful for businesses that use phone-based authentication methods and want protection from ATO attempts and other digital attacks.
Deploying the Best ATO Solution for Your Business Needs is a Priority in 2025
The stats are frightening: the number of account takeover attacks increased by 354% in 2023. The cost to a business of a successful ATO attack is, on average, $4.62 million, with large companies around 60% more likely to fall victim to an ATO attempt than their smaller counterparts.
However, whatever your business size or type, taking steps to defend it against ATO attacks – and other online threats such as credential stuffing – is crucial. Use the guide above to help work out the type of solution that’ll best meet your business needs, and take a look at the best-in-class ATO solutions listed to narrow down your choice and keep your business safe.
