Industry heavyweights unite to combat online fraud

Credit data analytics business Veda holds conferences twice a year with industry stakeholders to discuss trends in financial services fraud and how to respond.

Imelda Newton, general manager of fraud and identity solutions at Veda, said today’s cybercriminals are talented, organised, efficient, well-funded and employ sophisticated equipment.

“In the past year, they have successfully taken personal and financial data from hundreds of millions of consumers by fraudulently opening new accounts, taking over existing accounts and committing payment fraud,” Ms Newton said.

“The challenge for most financial institutions has shifted from detecting fake account access to stopping valid customers from being caught in the fraud net.”

According to global data sourced by Veda, financial services attacks typically take place during mobile banking, online money transfers, lending, broking and the issuing of credit cards.

Furthermore, the most common means of executing cybercrime are through false account creation, fraudulent payments and theft of logins.

The data suggests that by the end of the 2015 calendar year, half of all cybercrime attacks will be targeted at mobile devices.