How innovation and emerging technology drives change against the war on cybercrime and fraud

There has been a steep rise over recent years in cyber-criminals using advanced techniques to target customers, such as social engineering, which is a huge threat to the banking and consumer sectors. Businesses should be aiming to use automation, AI, and other technologies to protect themselves and their customers from cyber-crime. So, how can businesses arm themselves against this ever-growing threat and better protect their customers? 

Protection against cyber dependent crimes

Authorised push payment (APP) has become more attractive to cyber-criminals with the introduction to real-time payment schemes, such as faster payments in the UK. This is because it allows cyber-criminals to act quickly when stealing funds. 

UK finance conducted a report in 2018, which stated that a staggering total of £145.4m was lost due to APP scams, which poses a huge ongoing threat to the financial services industry, pressing organisations to reshape and demonstrate new innovative methods of prevention. This has been more apparent in the banking community where firms are utilising different forms of AI to automate customer profiling, which detects patterns in financial behaviour and spots fraud and money laundering in real-time. This added to other innovative methods, such as location-based security, is tackling the problem head-on, while reducing costs, in both time and money, by automating these processes through AI and machine learning. 

Regardless of company size or offering, it’s virtually impossible to safeguard against every possible cyber-attack. Yet the above is a great example of using AI and machine learning innovatively to automate processes and combat cyber-crime risks. 

The strengths and weaknesses of AI fighting financial crime

Machine learning and artificial intelligence can help guard against cyber-attacks. However, this poses both risks and opportunities for the information security and financial services community. There are many questions that businesses should be asking themselves. On one hand, can firms provide assurances that organisations are using AI and similar technologies appropriately? Furthermore, what’s to say hackers can’t foil security or fraud algorithms? 

Automation

One of the huge benefits of AI is to alleviate the burden of laborious manual processes. As an example, fraud teams would traditionally have had to review transactions manually, where automation streamlines this process while reducing cost and resource in an already competitive resource market. Organisations can then add another layer of automated defence in teaching systems to identify signs of fraud and other problems, where the existing resource can step in to examine the anomaly, or acting on threat actors more strategically. 

The ability to evaluate massive datasets quickly doesn’t just free-up resource for more value-added tasks. It enables them to perform tasks more thoroughly, through a deep-dive approach. The process of predicting risk becomes much more accurate as the volume and quality of data grows. However, we need to take into consideration that the quality of data plays a vital role in this success. 

Social engineering, password hygiene, and two-factor authentication 

The basics of poor password hygiene and users securing their accounts properly is still a major factor when targeting cyber-crime and fraud. A lot of UK banks aren’t properly protecting their online customers with two-factor authentication. 

Challenger banks are causing disruption in this area, creating new innovative tools for fraud prevention and detection, like location-based security, card freezing, or two-factor authentication. 

Culture and awareness

Driving a culture of security against cyber-crime is pivotal to the success of information security or fraud prevention strategy. With the continual rise in authorised and unauthorised fraud, we need to become more savvy consumers. 

According to the 2018 Verizon Data Breach Report, phishing and pretexting (presenting oneself as someone else in order to obtain private information) account for 93% of social breaches, and email is the most common attack vector at 96%.

Cyber workforce and upskill strategy

As an industry, there is still a huge amount to do to overcome cyber-crime at an entry level. It is crucial that you are upskilling and reskilling your teams, as this will attract a more diverse workforce to your organisation. 

Information security and fraud impacts so many areas in businesses, and as it is a hugely competitive recruitment market, it is important to consider a diverse pool of candidates during your talent acquisition efforts, rather than looking for a certain type of professional to join your organisation. 

It is apparent that there is a very strong case for organisations to create a strategy for investing in AI and emerging technologies, as these provide a great lifeline against the war on cyber-crime and fraud. In the disruptive digital world of today, human error and basic cyber and fraud awareness will undo the most sophisticated of solutions. It is clear that more is needed to drive culture and awareness of cyber and fraud in the industry. 

If you are interested in hiring top professionals in the technology sector, please get in touch with one of our specialist recruitment consultants today. Alternatively, submit a job spec, and we will call you.

Luke Pulsford

Senior Consultant, Michael Page Technology

T: 0207 269 2241

E: lukepulsford@michaelpage.com