JPMorgan Ups Cyber Defenses as Scam Attacks Rise

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase is not immune to the recent, global surge in cybercrime.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s summit in Davos Switzerland, Mary Callahan Erdoes, head of the bank’s asset and wealth management division, said fending off cyber criminals is a big task.

“The fraudsters get smarter, savvier, quicker, more devious, more mischievous,” said Erdoes, whose comments were reported by Bloomberg News. “It’s so hard and it’s going to become increasingly harder and that’s why staying one step ahead of it is really the job of each and [every one] of us.”

Nearly 43% of America’s financial institutions saw an increase in fraud between 2022 and 2023, according to a PYMNTS Intelligence study in collaboration with Hawk AI. That translates to a rise in fraud losses increasing by about 65% from $2.3 million in 2022 to $3.8 million in 2023.

Already this year, mortgage company loanDepot has suffered a cybersecurity incident in which an unauthorized third party was able to gain access to company systems and encryption data.

And in December, VF Corporation, owner of Vans, The North Face, Timberland and Dickies, reported that it was having trouble fulfilling orders following a cyberattack.

The new year, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week, gives companies a good opportunity to “get their cyber house in order.”

“The No. 1 thing that I would start with is good cyber hygiene,” Rosa Ramos-Kwok, managing director and business information security officer for commercial banking at J.P. Morgan, told PYMNTS in December, explaining that companies can sometimes fall behind on patching up legacy systems, which leaves aged software with “all sorts of vulnerabilities” because firms had “other priorities, or it was too expensive.”

Ramos-Kwok explained that businesses rarely see just one piece of data that is compromised by an attack but in many cases an entire system.

And increasingly, deploying artificial intelligence (AI) and other modern innovations can help companies build a robust, multilayered defense.

“Once you’ve upscaled your technology stack and gotten your technical colleagues aware of how to use AI technology and apply it, it can be applied to use cases beyond just fraud or payments,” Erika Dietrich, vice president, global fraud prevention risk services at ACI Worldwide, said in an interview with PYMNTS.  “It’s about applying this innovation across your business organization in a multitude of different ways.”