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Collaboration is the key to fighting identity fraud

Identity fraud in the UK was recently said by experts to be at record “epidemic levels” with Cifas discovering that more than 89,000 cases were reported in the first six months of the year alone – a 5% rise year-on-year. The advent of internet banking – and more recently, mobile banking – has changed the fraud landscape forever, not least because most fraudulent incidences are overwhelmingly taking place via internet channels. Collaboration is the key.

Statistics show that fraud follows the channels of adoption; while accurate figures today for fraud (particularly mobile) are hard to come by thanks to various factors (e.g. incidences going unreported by victims or banks), the rise in frequency of increasingly sophisticated fraud techniques demonstrates a criminal community that is getting harder and harder to prevent, identify and even prosecute. As the major technology players of this world roll out multi-factor authentication methods in order to block dishonest transactions, fraudsters continue to work hard to try and break them.

One example of a ‘newer’ type of fraud that we work with many different banks on to develop new methods of prevention and identification, is SIM Swap fraud. Social engineering has played a huge part in boosting fraudsters’ efforts to clean out unsuspecting customers’ bank accounts and is an essential component of frauds like SIM Swap. For this method of fraud to work, the criminal needs to convince the mobile network operator to replace the victim’s mobile SIM card in order to access sensitive information, such as one-time pass-codes for payment verification.

Our Sekura platform is the result of market consultation with some of the biggest banks in the world, rigorous testing and successful real-life deployments up and down the country. What we do is finally offer banks and payment services providers an opportunity to fight fire with fire when it comes to fraud. If mobile banking is the present and future, so too is leveraging the benefits of the convenience and speed of the smartphone to validate a banking customer. Mobile data, generated by each and every cellular and Wi-Fi connected device in use, is free, public and almost invaluable to helping security leaders to strike that balance between consumer convenience and the required levels of security.

Sekura advocates that collaboration is the key, between banks, payment services providers and mobile network operators, in fighting fraud. No bank is at any less or any more risk of crime than another, and all banks have a profitable future when they put the customer first.

To learn more about how we work, or to discuss the Sekura approach with any of our team, Contact Us.