The Evolving Face Of The Fight Against Fraud
PYMNTS, 03 May 2021
Fighting fraudsters is a problematic realm in the digital era because fraud stubbornly refuses to be a static target.
Instead, digital fraud is an ever-evolving and improving field of endeavor that is always readying for its next evolution. It looks for its next entry point and adopts the latest technology or methodology to make getting the job done — and making off with ill-gotten data or funds — easier to do from the inside and harder to detect from the outside.
And while that news is far from comforting, particularly when combined with all of the successful fraud escapades we’ve seen in the digital era, Onfido Vice President of Product Management Fraud Albert Roux told PYMNTS that it’s not an impossible situation. As a whole, the financial services industry is evolving alongside the fraudster — and layering in additional defenses beyond that first layer of knowing your customer created by the compliance requirements that rule financial services.
He said those requirements aren’t an endpoint when it comes to building protections for consumers but a springboard from which financial institutions (FIs) can layer in digital signals like networks, device information and biometrics to understand what is happening within and on the transaction level. FIs need “to continuously authenticate the user to make sure that you’re not dealing with data thief or an account takeover, or someone attempting money laundering,” Roux said.
There may not be a silver bullet to put down all frauds at once, he said, but that isn’t what financial organizations need to keep fraudsters out. What they do need is layered defenses continually filtering data through various streams to verify that the consumer is whom they think they’re dealing with. That’s something fraudsters are making more difficult every day.
