Visa Teams With Expel to Tackle $10.5 Trillion Cybercrime Threat

Visa has teamed with security firm Expel to help customers guard themselves against cybercrime.

The partnership, announced Monday (Oct. 2), is aimed at helping businesses address the rising cost of cybercrime, which is expected to reach $10.5 trillion on a global scale by 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.

“On average, businesses across the globe lose more than $4 million per year as a result of cybercrime, resources that can be used to increase innovation and address needs in the market,” said James Mirfin, global head of Visa’s Risk and Identity Solutions, said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.

“As customers deal with an ever-expanding range of threats, they’re asking Visa for solutions to help them better manage their risk holistically, including cyber risk.”

According to the release, the collaboration offers 24/7 detection and response and is designed to let clients move from a “reactive” security position to one that’s more proactive and focused on risk-based decision-making.

It will also give them improved threat detection and response capabilities in the face of evolving cybersecurity threats, as well as managed detection and response (MDR) services “informed by external intelligence, trends, and threat techniques.”

PYMNTS spoke last month with Michael Jabbara, vice president and global head of fraud services at Visa, about the way fraud and cybercrime are evolving.

Until recently, he said, “You needed to have a certain amount of technical expertise to craft a malicious code. You needed to build your own toolkit.” Cybercrime had been the kingdom of well-organized and well-funded gangs.

“But now there’s been a democratization” of fraud, Jabbara said, letting anyone visit the dark web and purchase the tools and the tutorials needed for successful attacks — taking advantage of ransomware as a service and other low-cost attack methods.

Meanwhile, new innovations in technology are also helping fraudsters have a lot more scale and automation when carrying out their crimes, Erika Dietrich, vice president of global fraud prevention risk services at ACI Worldwide, told PYMNTS in a recent interview.

“What has changed is the speed and scale these tools and technologies give fraudsters, as well as the way they can educate themselves in open forums and chat channels on how to deploy and use these new technologies,” Dietrich said.

“What has stayed the same is the need for businesses to provide their customers with the payment methods they prefer, while ensuring those channels stay secure.”