Radius Bank: Becoming Partners In Crime Prevention Can Help FIs Beat Fraud Rings

Cybercrime is a constant concern for banks, credit unions and other financial institutions (FIs), with more than 25 percent of all malware attacks targeting the financial industry specifically. Compromised credit card fraud increased 212 percent year over year in 2019, while customer credential leaks increased 129 percent during the same period.

Many of these fraud and cybercrime attempts are the result of fraudsters working together, either selling each other data or sharing techniques to break into bank systems and conduct their schemes. One recent study found that at least 10,000 such hacker rings currently exist in the United States, meaning that FIs must forge alliances of their own to counter this pervasive threat.

The July Preventing Financial Crimes Playbook explores the latest financial crime developments, including the collective intelligence efforts for countering fraud in the financial industry, jumps in fraud attempts against credit cards and mobile banking apps, and new industry associations dedicated to rooting out and stopping financial crime in its tracks.

Developments Around The Financial Crimes Space

Credit card fraud is just one of many techniques that fraudsters leverage to scam FIs and their customers, but it is on the rise amid the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal recently reported a 35 percent jump in year-over-year credit card fraud in April, with fraudsters harnessing phishing schemes and brute-force hacking attacks, among others, to swindle data and funds. The increase in credit card fraud is part of a larger trend over the past several years, with such losses totaling $16.9 billion in 2019, a 15 percent increase over 2018.

Fraudsters also frequently target mobile banking apps, and these types of attacks are also expected to be on the rise in the coming months, according to the FBI. The agency recently warned against a variety of different mobile banking hacking attempts, with some hackers deploying fake apps that steal users’ login information, and others leveraging trojan viruses to infiltrate user accounts and pilfer their data. The FBI advises smartphone users to download apps only from official app stores and bank websites, as these are pre-screened for malware.

Banks are fighting back against these varied fraud techniques by forming industry associations. The most recent example comes from a conglomerate of 31 FIs and trade groups, including the American Bankers Association (ABA) and the Bank Policy Institute, which recently announced the creation of the Cyber Risk Institute (CRI). The CRI aims to create cybersecurity standards and strategies by promoting a common language for cybersecurity risk assessments, and also plans to develop a new list of cybersecurity guidelines and best practices for FIs to follow.

For more on these and other financial crime news items, download this month’s Playbook.

How Radius Bank Leverages Cooperative Threat Intelligence For Fraud Prevention

Fraudsters are teaming up to rip off FIs, forming elaborate rings that work cooperatively on account takeovers and phishing attempts. Preventing these cyberattacks requires ironclad authentication, but obtaining the data required for said authentication requires collaboration in turn.

In this month’s Feature Story, PYMNTS spoke with Chris Tremont, executive vice president at Radius Bank, about how the bank leverages collective intelligence from FinTechs and other FIs to ensure that its customers are who they say they are.

Deep Dive: How Banks Prevent Financial Crime Through Data Sharing And Joint Intelligence

Fraudsters are notorious for working together on collective fraud schemes, sharing stolen data and techniques with each other to fool cybersecurity systems. This teamwork among bad actors needs to be met with equal collaboration among banks, FinTechs and cybersecurity firms, and there are several industry associations around the world that are doing just that.

This month’s Deep Dive explores how fraud organizations collaborate to pull off their misdeeds and how industry conglomerates have prevented more than 4.2 billion pounds ($5.2 billion) in fraud attempts by harnessing shared intelligence.

About The Playbook

The monthly Preventing Financial Crimes Playbook, a NICE Actimize collaboration, offers coverage of the most recent news and trends relating to fraud in the financial services space and assesses the use of different tools and technologies for safeguarding against emerging and existing threats.