The National Cyber Securty Centre has published its 2019 annual review “Making the UK the safest place to live and work online“. The report reveals that over a twelve month period it is estimated that there were just under one million (966,000) incidents of computer misuse experienced by adults aged 16 and over. Many of these related to payment card issues.
To add to this, the report finds more than one million stolen credit cards were reported in the U.K. A driver for this is because criminal groups are using criminal marketplaces in cyberspace to buy and sell personal information and credit card details. In many cases, card providers are then able to block cards to protect both financial institutions and the public.
Commenting on the impact for Digital Journal, OneSpan’s Mark Crichton, Senior Director Security Product Management states: “Fraud is one of the most prominent threats facing banks and FIs today, so it’s encouraging to see significant numbers of payment card attempts being thwarted by the NCSC and Operation Haulster.”
Crichton, however, notes that more needs to be done by financial institutions to avert fraud: “Banks and FIs must also do what they can to make things harder for criminals. In this day and age, they must make use of new risk-based technologies, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, and modern identity verification methods to spot suspicious activity.”
He recommends that these technologies provide financial bodies with “the ability to analyse multiple pieces of cross-channel data from different sources to make real-time security decisions and better manage their risk of fraud – especially for remote, faceless transaction.”
