The danger identity fraud poses and what companies can do

Enter­pris­es have for too long tak­en a siloed approach to dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty process­es. Dif­fer­ent data struc­tures are owned by dif­fer­ent depart­ments, who often have con­trast­ing, even com­pet­ing, objec­tives when it comes to onboard­ing and man­ag­ing users. The com­pli­ance group exam­ines per­son­al data in light of var­i­ous reg­u­la­tions while the risk group looks to reduce fraud loss­es, and it’s all inde­pen­dent of the prod­uct man­age­ment and cus­tomer sup­port depart­ments.

Such frag­men­ta­tion is cre­at­ing fric­tion-filled expe­ri­ences and con­sumer frus­tra­tion, while nation­al and inter­na­tion­al silos at a data lev­el are also inhibit­ing com­pa­nies from learn­ing from iden­ti­ty insights out­side of their own organ­i­sa­tion. Pri­va­cy con­cerns have under­stand­ably fuelled data pro­tec­tion­ism, how­ev­er new tech advance­ments now mean encrypt­ed data sig­nals can be shared to bol­ster fraud defences with­out any iden­ti­fi­able user infor­ma­tion being shared.

The busi­ness chal­lenge of a frag­ment­ed dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty

Fraud­sters know how debil­i­tat­ing silos can be, which is why they not only seek to exploit them in the busi­ness­es they attack but also avoid them in their own activ­i­ties by embrac­ing net­works. To com­bat syn­thet­ic fraud, which already accounts for 15 per cent of cred­it card loss­es, accord­ing to Exper­ian, and is the fastest grow­ing type of finan­cial crime, organ­i­sa­tions must part­ly learn from the fraud­sters them­selves.

“The way cyber­crim­i­nals behave is not siloed at all, it’s net­worked, so how do we fight them in the same way? We’re learn­ing that busi­ness­es have to be adap­tive and col­lab­o­ra­tive in order to com­pete,” says Carey O’Connor Kola­ja, CEO at iden­ti­ty man­age­ment and intel­li­gence com­pa­ny AU10TIX, whose solu­tions link phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal iden­ti­ties so com­pa­nies and con­sumers can con­fi­dent­ly con­nect.

“Iden­ti­ty has tra­di­tion­al­ly been thought about in terms of what needs to be known to ver­i­fy access to some­thing par­tic­u­lar. If I want to buy alco­hol, I have to show my ID but the sell­er only needs to ver­i­fy I’m over the legal drink­ing age. If I want to get a loan from a bank, there’s a lot more about me and my finan­cial suit­abil­i­ty that must be shared.

“Over time, iden­ti­ty is not just a gov­ern­ment issued ID or a dig­i­tal foot­print – it’s an accu­mu­la­tion of infor­ma­tion that describes you and your behav­iours, mean­ing iden­ti­ty becomes much big­ger than we ever realised, as do the oppor­tu­ni­ties for cyber­crim­i­nals. We’re see­ing fraud attacks from the most unex­pect­ed places with PII not nec­es­sar­i­ly acquired from a full account takeover but through skim­ming small bits of infor­ma­tion from unsus­pect­ing sources.”

The uni­fied fight against syn­thet­ic fraud

AU10TIX’s has trans­formed from devel­op­ing tech­nol­o­gy iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion for bor­der con­trol and air­port secu­ri­ty to iden­ti­ty intel­li­gence that sup­ports cus­tomer due dili­gence and onboard­ing for brands like Google, Pay­Pal and Uber. Its unique her­itage gives it a strong edge in under­stand­ing what hap­pens across the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal divide, and has allowed it to launch INSTINCT, a syn­thet­ic fraud detec­tion solu­tion that is able to ver­i­fy the authen­tic­i­ty of an iden­ti­ty through data sig­nals alone. This will enable a glob­al net­work of data sig­nals that aids com­pa­nies in fight­ing fraud togeth­er.

“When you start to look at syn­thet­ic fraud over a con­tin­u­um, you can real­ly unearth where the per­pe­tra­tors are,” says O’Connor Kola­ja. “We’re catch­ing 50 syn­thet­ic iden­ti­ty attacks in any one com­pa­ny on a giv­en day. Most impor­tant­ly, we’re able to not only stop syn­thet­ic fraud in one net­work or ‘closed gar­den’, but safe­ly share the intel­li­gence with oth­er organ­i­sa­tions around the world so they can pre­vent the same attack from hap­pen­ing again – con­tin­u­ous­ly updat­ing a syn­thet­ic iden­ti­ty watch list.

“Covid-19 has cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment where peo­ple are con­cerned more about cyber­at­tacks than ter­ror­ist attacks. It has forced iden­ti­ty pro­tec­tion to the fore­front of our minds and ampli­fied the need to under­stand how, through tech­nol­o­gy, our iden­ti­ties and behav­iour can be used to equalise and authen­ti­cate our access to all life’s expe­ri­ences. We have to grasp this oppor­tu­ni­ty to accel­er­ate uni­fi­ca­tion and adap­tive iden­ti­ty process­es, advanc­ing our progress to a more secure and inclu­sive world.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.au10tix.com

Spon­sored by

Au10tix