Written by Guido Ronchetti, CTO at XTN Cognitive Security®
For some years, the financial world has been increasingly oriented toward digitalization. This obviously has a very positive return in terms of innovation and people’s life enhancement but also a good amount of risk if security needs are not considered. The outcome is crystal clear. Every day global news reports fraudulent phenomena affecting digital services, especially financial ones. In this scenario, it is recurrent to highlight fraudsters’ cunning and end-users’ naivety. It is easy to think the weak link is the user of the service and the environment in which it operates (device / pc + APP). We definitely agree about the importance of end-user awareness, but we also want to be realistic, affirming that we can’t expect financial services customers to be IT security experts.
Attacks incipit is no different from a few years ago. It always starts with phishing, smishing, or vishing campaigns to collect data by outlining the victim’s profile. Then social engineering attacks follow. A fraudster faking to be a bank’s call center operator calls the customer and convinces him to do some transactions ending up stealing his money.
What changes from some years ago is that nowadays, fraudsters’ skills are enormously improved, and they can easily trick the savviest user.
So let’s go back to saying that we can’t solve the problem only by educating the end-users. Financial institutions must prioritize adopting a comprehensive and real-time fraud protection strategy. It is no longer justifiable that many banks are not effectively equipped to fight fraud, considering the vast offer of behavioral-based antifraud solutions in the market. At XTN Cognitive Security®, we fight digital fraud daily thanks to a multi-level behavioral biometrics and behavioral analysis combo. Banks that have adopted our approach guarantees their digital services with a very effective level of security. On the one hand, customer accounts are secured, and on the other hand, the Bank’s brand reputation improves, driving its growth and competition in the market.
