Visa Lets Banks Access Its In-House Cybersecurity Capabilities

Visa debuted a solution designed to help financial institutions spot cyberthreats and prevent fraud, according to a Thursday (July 2) press release.

The Visa Threat Intelligence Platform (VTIP) employs the same cybersecurity capabilities Visa uses to protect its network, the release said.

“Fraud is widely recognized as a downstream outcome of earlier cyber incidents, often beginning with data compromise, credential theft or system exploitation well before a transaction is initiated,” the release said. “Cyberattacks that expose payment credentials can originate anywhere across the payments ecosystem, from merchants and issuers to acquirers, processors and service providers. In some cases, compromised credentials are trafficked and later misused, which can result in financial loss and operational disruption.”

Visa blocks around 90 million cyberattacks and 11 million phishing emails per month, and VTIP brings the same intelligence behind these defenses to customers in the financial sector, according to the release.

It includes capabilities such as Threat Intelligence, which provides “malware-based indicators of compromise” designed for the financial sector; Vulnerability Intelligence, which focuses on exploits and exposures relevant to each organization; Brand Intelligence, which identifies and prevents impersonation and brand abuse; Digital Identity Intelligence, which helps keep executives and employees from being personally targeted; and Financial Intelligence, which unearths compromised payment credentials from the dark web and “enriches them with VisaNet insights” to provide intelligence for fraud and risk teams, per the release.

“By unifying cyber and fraud intelligence, VTIP helps financial institutions better anticipate upstream threats, prioritize response and reduce the likelihood that cyber incidents escalate into fraud losses,” the release said.

James Mirfin, senior vice president, head of risk and security intelligence solutions at Visa, told PYMNTS in April about how fraud has evolved.

“Fraud has become a business, an economy,” he said, adding that technology has transformed criminal activity from ad hoc schemes to coordinated, professionalized operations.

In addition, advanced technology has given cybercriminals new weapons, even as it helps fraud-prevention teams do their jobs.

Artificial intelligence agents, deepfakes and voice cloning are tools that allow for larger and more convincing scams. Criminals can now automate activities that once needed human labor, allowing attacks to persist and at a wider volume.