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International Fraud Awareness Week – Hear from the experts

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Fraud is not a new concept – far from it. Since the dawn of time, fraudsters have looked to take advantage of circumstance and innocent people have fallen victim as a result. But, in our digital age, fraud is more prevalent than ever before. That’s why this International Fraud Awareness Week, we spoke to three experts in the field; to find out more about how organisations can protect themselves and their customers. Here’s what they had to say:

Ben Fraser, Global Head of Business Development, Insurance at Endava  

“As we enter International Fraud Awareness Week this year, it’s a startling realisation that fraud continues to plague consumers despite leaps and bounds in cybersecurity. Last year alone, scam attempts rose by 33%, resulting in £2.3bn in losses for consumers. As fraud continues to rise, the question needs to refocus not just on how we can prevent fraud, but also how consumers can take matters into their own hands.

“Part of the answer the answer may lie within embedded insurance, which allows insurers to reach consumers where they live and work: through offering solutions when they’re needed most, whether that’s while consumers are shopping online, checking their bank details, comparing cars for purchase, or looking for vets. 

“The concept of embedded insurance exists in a limited form today. There is, however, plenty of opportunity for insurers to better integrate solutions to eliminate the effort in consumers having to seek out support themselves, making it easier than ever to protect themselves from bad actors across their digital footprints. 

“As we head into International Fraud Awareness Week, hopefully we will see more of just that: better awareness of how technology can accelerate and combat the multiple threats we’ve see escalate as we all move toward a digital-first lifestyle. Making sure consumers have easy access to insurance is one – but one critical – element of that, and will go a long way in making sure consumers feel safe when heading online, flashing some cash, or hitting the road.”

Raj Samani, Chief Scientist and McAfee Enterprise fellow:

“International Fraud Awareness Week comes as a timely reminder that enterprises and individuals should all take time to shore up their cyber defences. The threat landscape is constantly evolving, and cybercriminals are expanding their tactics and target groups. As well as posing a threat to individuals across the country, fraud and scams intensify the threat for businesses. Today, many employees are accessing work files and information across both corporate and personal devices, meaning that while criminals could be targeting an individual, the end goal could be accessing sensitive enterprise information. Unfortunately, this threat has continued to increase due to the pandemic, with our research finding that 57% of UK organisations experienced increased cyber threats during COVID-19.

“To tackle rising fraud threats, businesses need to educate their workforce on best practices, such as reporting any suspicious activity, questioning whether a link is dodgy, or thinking before accepting an unknown phone call. Employees must be aware of and vigilant against threats to avoid making it too easy for criminals to cash in on both personal and company data.   

“It is also crucial that organisations deploy the necessary security protections across their enterprise. For example, they should adopt a Zero Trust mindset that can help them maintain control over access to the network and all instances within it, such as applications and data, and restrict them if necessary. By taking these measures, organisations can rest easy knowing that they have taken the correct steps to protect themselves and their workforce from cyber-led scams.”

Brett Beranek, Vice-President & General Manager, Security & Biometrics Line of Business, Nuance Communications

“Fraud Awareness Week acts as a reminder to businesses and consumers alike that cyber security solutions and fraud prevention tools are no longer optional, especially in our current climate. Indeed, new research from Nuance has found that on average victims of fraud lost over £3,300 each in the last 12 months – three times higher than in 2019.”  

“As we transition into a post-pandemic world of remote working, shopping and socialising, it has never been more important for businesses to ensure that users are provided with a more sophisticated and secure experience. Now is the time to confine PINs and passwords to the history books, so that modern technologies – such as biometrics – can be more widely deployed in order to robustly safeguard customers. 

“Biometric technologies authenticate individuals immediately based on their unique characteristics – taking away the need to remember PINs, passwords and other knowledge-based credentials prone to being exploited by scammers and providing peace of mind, as well as security, for end-users.” 

World Password Day: Security advice from McAfee, Nuance and more…

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Thursday (May 6th) marks the annual World Password Day – an awareness event designed to promote better password habits. This year, with so many of us working from home and cybersecurity stretched to the limit, safe and secure passwords are more important than ever before. With that in mind, we spoke to several experts to find out how consumers and businesses alike can ensure that their passwords stand up in today’s climate. Here’s what they had to say:

Brett Beranek, Vice-President & General Manager, Security & Biometrics Line of Business, Nuance: 

“World Password Day represents a reminder that PINs and passwords are an archaic tool, no longer fit for purpose. Passwords are being sold on the dark web, exploited for fraudulent activity and have even cost unfortunate individuals vast sums of money in terms of forgotten passwords to safeguard cryptocurrencies. 

“Indeed, new UK research from Nuance has found that over one in five (22%) consumers have admitted to relying on the same two or three different passwords or similar variations of them. A similar number (20%) say they receive notifications their passwords have been compromised on at least a monthly basis. This could leave those individuals at an increased risk of fraud, and it is the enterprises that must take responsibility to address this by strengthening their customers’ security with more modern solutions. 

“Given the same poll has found that on average victims of fraud lost over £3,200 each in the last 12 months – three times higher than two years ago – it is high time PINs and passwords are confined to the history books, so that technology – such as biometrics – can be more widely deployed in order to robustly safeguard customers.  Biometrics authenticates individuals immediately based on their unique characteristics – taking away the need to remember PINs, passwords and other knowledge-based credentials prone to being exploited by fraudsters and providing peace of mind, as well as security, for end-users.”

Raj Samani, Chief Scientist and McAfee Fellow:   

“When it comes to online safety, password hygiene has never been more relevant. Over the past year alone, we’ve seen a massive surge in online activity, with the pandemic leaving many Brits reliant on conducting daily activities such as shopping and banking online.  

“Passwords are of course a key part of our digital lives, enabling people to gain quick access to a variety of online platforms, accounts and devices.  However, it can be easy to take them for granted and forget the basics of password hygiene during our busy lives, particularly now as we have so many accounts to keep on top in order to get on with our day-to-day activities. 

“Passwords which include personal information, such as your name, or pet’s name, make them easier to guess. This is especially true when we share a lot of personal information online, making it easier for online criminals to make guesses about your password. You should also never share a password, even with a close relative. While this may seem harmless, sharing these details could result in critical personal information falling into the wrong hands. In fact, McAfee recommends changing your passwords about every three months at a minimum. This is so that if a password has been shared or compromised, the safety of your online information has a higher chance of being kept safe by making this change. 

“World Password Day is an excellent time to highlight the importance of password safety to consumers. But it is just as important to ensure password hygiene remains top of mind at all times and not just for one day.”

Krupa Srivatsan, Director of Product Marketing at Infoblox

“The average person manages anywhere between 60 and 90 password-protected accounts–a number that goes up for IT professionals. In an ideal world, each password would be a unique set of randomly generated characters and numbers. But that doesn’t really happen. 

“Weak passwords represent a cybersecurity threat for organizations already struggling with security compliance during remote work and the blurring of personal and professional spaces. In fact, more than 80% of data breaches involved brute force or stolen credentials. 

“Organisations need to take a few extra steps to ensure that they don’t compromise on security while their employees are working at home. Improved last-mile endpoint security solutions paired with password best practices can help improve network security.

“For example, Organisations can leverage the benefits of a DNS-first approach for a wide variety of detection and protection purposes, both on and off-premises. Because it sits at the core of the network and touches every device that connects to it, DNS is a powerful tool that can be used to catch the more than 90% of malware that uses it to enter or exit a network.”

John Smith, Solutions Architect at Veracode: 

“As businesses continue to operate remotely, and companies deploy their infrastructure into online environments, it’s clear that password hygiene should be a big focus. Hackers have the ability to crack a 7-character password in 0.29 milliseconds, which is why it’s time to focus on application authentication. A simple static password will not suffice, and companies should avoid using predictable passwords to avoid damaging password spraying attacks. Passwords should always be unique, not recycled, and stored in a secure password safe. 

“Although businesses are conscious of the role that software security plays in keeping data protected, banks and other industries need to take more ownership of application authentication to help detect fraudulent account access. This World Password Day, I urge businesses to empower developers by training them on best practices in secure coding and providing the right tools to prevent users being more exposed to data breaches from hackers who will continue to look past passwords for weak points in the application layer.“

Ramsés Gallego, International Chief Technology Officer, CyberRes, a Micro Focus line of business: 

“As digital-first approaches and distributed workforces become the status quo for many industries, raising awareness around the importance of password security has arguably never been more important. And with recent NCSC research finding that people are using passwords which are an easy target for hackers, it’s clear more needs to be done by businesses to provide the technology and training to ensure better cyber-resiliency across the board.

“It is imperative that we secure systems and infrastructure to ensure that the right people have the right access to the right assets at the right time. No more, no less. Importantly, we now live in an era where we do not need passwords alone – or sometimes at all – to enable trusted access. Multi-factor authentication is a useful tool, using more personal attributes, such as biometric data in someone’s voice, or devices, such as a code sent to an individual’s watch, to replace or augment passwords.

“Yet despite these advances, there is no doubt that, for now, passwords aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. What’s more, boosting password security – and cyber-resiliency more widely – cannot be achieved by technology alone. Businesses must ensure they are educating their employees on best practice cybersecurity hygiene, beginning with how to create strong passwords and the importance of using different ones for different applications and services. Not only that, they must make sure workforces understand the various tactics used by hackers to target unsuspecting users, from phishing to fake websites. Crucially, increasing awareness among staff on how they could potentially be putting their organisation’s data at risk is key, especially as workforces continue to access systems remotely during and after the pandemic.”

Nuance trumpets $1bn fraud savings

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Nuance says it saved saved organisations more than $1 billion in total fraud costs in 2018 using AI-powered biometrics technology.

Fraud in enterprise contact centres has always been a challenge to manage, but with the explosion of digital channels, organisations today are faced with securing an increasingly complex ecosystem.

At the same time, fraudsters are getting more sophisticated, working through networks and social engineering their way into accounts to commit intricate, devastating crimes, using information they obtain through one attack to gain access to other accounts a given person may own.

Javelin Strategy & Research reports that account takeovers (ATOs) tripled over the past year, resulting in $5.1B in losses and a CFCA report found that the telco industry was hit with nearly $30B in fraud losses in 2018.  

Nuance Security Suite helps enterprises thwart omni-channel fraud through a layered offering of artificial intelligence technologies, including voice and behavioural biometrics, intelligent channel, geo and network detectors and ConversationPrintand DevicePrint algorithms.

Together, these technologies can identify legitimate customers through the sound of their voice, location, device and the way they talk, tap and type – flagging when a call or online interaction is likely fraudulent by analysing typical conversation patterns, voice characteristics and other aspects of an interaction, identifying perpetrators whose profiles do not match those of a given customer.  

“With Nuance voice biometrics, we get a clearer view of customer and fraudster behaviour, so we can keep genuine customers protected and take the fight to the criminals who are targeting their accounts,” said Jason Costain, Head of Fraud Strategy and Relationship Management, RBS Group. 

In less than one year, RBS screened 17 million inbound calls with Nuance Security Suite. Of these, 23,000 have led to alerts, and the bank has found that one in every 3,500 calls is a fraud attempt.

“The ROI from the tool is well over 300%, so as payback our technology deployment has been very impressive,” Costain added.    

As consumers are getting more comfortable with biometric identification and organisations look for innovative ways to authenticate, adoption of Nuance’s Security Suite is growing at a rapid rate.

Recent deployments include Lloyds Banking Group, Allied Irish Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Rakuten Life Insurance and RBS Group. In addition to curbing fraud, Nuance biometrics decreases the overall time agents spend resolving customer queries with one multinational financial services firm reducing agent handle time by 89 seconds after deploying the product.  

“Our customers come to us not only wanting to make their authentication process more convenient for customers but perhaps more importantly to evolve their contact centre security strategy. Our approach is unique in that our algorithms can not only identify and validate individuals by their voice, but also understand what types of conversation patterns fraudsters typically use. That’s powerful when you consider how much money is lost due to fraudulent account access each year, whether through traditional phone channels or in complex cross-channel attacks,” said Brett Beranek, General Manger, Security Business, Nuance Enterprise.