Cyber threat is gaining ground, as online casino and gambling industry gains momentum

One of the sectors that will most likely to come out of the current health crisis unharmed is the online gambling industry.

When we look at a study by the GrandViewResearch, we realize that a huge growth is coming the way of online gambling. In the US alone, the value is expected to hit $102.9 billion USD by 2025.

With online casinos becoming a staple option across countries like the United Kingdom, many websites are appearing out of the blue and not all are safe or secure.

Many casino frequenters opt to use comparison sites, as the UK casinos listed at trusted websites like Casimple.com all get independently checked to ensure they are all licensed and fair.
There is little doubt as to why the online gambling environment is currently at its best moment. More people are playing games on the internet as they stay home due to the current situation. Because of this, they’ve overtaken their physical games counterpart in very huge ways.
Thousands of billions of transactions happen online through debit and credit cards, e-wallets and wire transfers in online gambling environments. This places gambling firms among the biggest targets for hackers and scammers. There are two major ways through which cyber criminals target their resources, and they include stealing the money and getting hold of confidential data shared by gamblers. That is why it is very imperative for online gambling establishments to create platforms that are safe and secure for both the consumers and the operators.
What Is About To Change in the Online Casino Multi-Billion Dollar Industry?
Over the past decades, there have been a lot of changes in the online gambling industry. The coming years are also predicted to bring about more changes in the sector. For instance, the predicted compound annual growth for the online gambling industry from 2020 to 2027 is 11.5%, and that’s a huge volume of growth. The meaning of this is that all of the industry enthusiasts will get involved in the competition, with casinos bringing in new ideas and software developers creating more innovative apps, all geared towards advanced customer experience. So, what are these new ideas that will come into the online gambling fold?

We’ve made a list of the five key ideas that are changing the entire casino and gambling atmosphere below.

Rise In Cryptocurrency Transactions
We cannot call cryptocurrency the future any longer, because Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are already in use in the majority of online gambling platforms. They use it as the standard payment modes in their sites and that is because of the advantages they see in it, including;
There are records of all operations in the games, and so everything is documented.
Every settlement between the casinos and players happens in the open with full transparency.  Online Betting Platform 

Gamblers data are entered during deposits.
Blockchain systems are practically impossible to hack.

When you use cryptocurrency, the transaction fees are nonexistent or hugely smaller than what fiat money charges.
Deposits and withdrawals reflect much faster than when your fiat money transactions would be completed.  Secure Betting Platform 

With cryptocurrency payments, players’ identities are completely hidden, giving them full anonymity

Adoption of VR and AR Casinos
The next dimension that is hugely making its way to the center of the gaming industry is Virtual Reality, and many casinos are already incorporating it into their gaming environment. The technology develops a very new and unique gaming environment, like an entirely new reality. In poker, an environment can be shared by many players, and this makes it a more wholesome experience.

The Augmented Reality comes after the Virtual Reality and both of them have some similarities. In AR, the present environment is supplemented with computer overlays. One game that uses AR is Pokémon Go, and it’s becoming hugely popular.

Evolving Gambling Habit of Customers
The habits of customers evolve as time goes on. This is revealed in social gambling and the arrival of many gambling apps. It is now easy for players to compete on leaderboards and social slots when they deem fit. People have been massively influenced by mobile technology, as a large number of the population of the world now owns a smartphone.

So, casinos are investing in gaming apps now more than ever before, and most of them are creating games that are mobile friendly. The mobile games will soon overshadow their desktop counterpart.

Stricter Casino And Gambling Regulations
Gambling is becoming a serious business in the world. It is legal in some countries already, while some others hope to make it legal by 2020. In 2019, Belarus made it legal, and Ukraine introduced the bill for an act to legalize it. In Russia, the identification protocol required for gaming has been simplified, and the UK also started accepting customer identification with obligatory requirements.

Live Games Evolution

The rapid evolution of live games is another angle in online gambling. Here, croupiers deal with games with professional sound and lighting equipment from unique studios. There are cameras at different angles of the room to allow players to enjoy everything that happens in the studio. Live casinos will become more popular in the future.

Why Online Gambling and Casino Security Is Very Essential

It is crucial to reduce the effects of online fraud and cyber-attacks in 2020. Hackers are advancing hugely; with tools for sophisticated techniques including app based hacking to break down online security and breach data, and manipulation of signals through fake apps. According to statista.com estimates, the value of the global gambling market will hit $94 billion USD in 2024, and with this increase, the cybercrime threat will increase too. So, for this growth and development in online gambling to be sustained, cyber protection has an essential role to play.

Below are some of the major cyber-attacks that the online gambling industry is battling.

Recent Cyber-Attacks in Online Gambling Sites

Expediting – where time consuming actions are expedited with bots to give players unfair advantages by going against gameplay rules.

DDoS attack – means distributed denial of service, and here, an unexpected increase in traffic is used by hackers to flood gaming platforms, and this causes delays in loading times or may crash the entire site. This chases players off the platform.

Scraping – is automated and allows hackers to steal data from databases, websites, and APIs with bots. The data is used to manipulate gambling operations. With the latency that they cause, legitimate customers suffer prolonged load times.

Account Takeover Attacks – this is very complicated and it is where hackers gain access to the accounts of legal users to commit identity fraud and illegal payments when they are in. They can start selling players resources stolen from their account. They lure victims to click on infected links or accept malicious friend requests.

SQL Injection – Structured Query Language (SQL) takes place when hackers feed infected SQL statements. This allows them to get access to the database server, thereby adding, modifying and deleting data as they deem fit.