Protection from scams shouldn't sacrifice privacy

Australia continues to face a plethora of growing cyber threats. Although originally considered an issue for risk and fraud teams, the impact of cyber attacks has become mainstream, most notably through scams. Given scams primarily target individual consumers rather than large organisations, a wake-up call has echoed throughout the nation on how to combat these deceptive threats. Financial organisations are making an effort to protect their customers by implementing innovative technologies such as biometric technologies — however, when dealing with such an individually personal threat, the balance of privacy and protection can become misconstrued. Protecting Australians against scams should not come at the sacrifice of their privacy.

A scamming epidemic

Scams are more prevalent than ever in Australia, affecting millions of individuals. Not only have they increased in volume, but they have also increased in variety and the rate at which attacks take place. According to Scamwatch Australia, in 2022 Australians lost $568,634,874 to scams alone, with scams operating predominantly through text messages, phone calls and emails as these provides quick access to targets. Scams operate with both individuals and organisations as targets in mind, with end goals of accessing company data or having victims make fraudulent payments. Scammers commonly impersonate banks in order to realistically access banking details, and in 2022 Scamwatch received 14,603 reports of bank impersonation scams. This has seen increased scrutinisation and pressure placed on banks, as they’re being challenged to improve their role in rectifying or preventing scams.

Scammers are continuing to evolve in their tactics too, as these cybercriminals look to adopt more sophisticated techniques to deceive unsuspecting victims. Criminals are now utilising the rise of generative AI to scam individuals, with the likes of voice generation to improve their social engineering techniques. As social engineering tactics continue to rise, it is important that cybersecurity innovation remains parallel in growth, and that originations and individuals have the right tools to differentiate between AI-generated and real-life conversations.

Although individuals falling victim to impersonation is out of an organisation’s control, the right solutions and practices can be implemented to reduce the chance of payments to fraudulent accounts taking place. Behavioural biometric intelligence is able to analyse an individual’s unique patterns to uncover any accounts of impersonation. Unlike voice and physical biometrics, behavioural intelligence allows the individual’s privacy to stay private and cannot be copied or manipulated.

Privacy vs protection

The use of fraud-fighting technology and data to protect individuals should be effective without overstepping privacy boundaries. Organisations have a responsibility to protect and correctly use customer data and are legally obligated to act within the Australian privacy law. All entities entrusted with safeguarding consumer privacy must have a multi-tiered, risk-based authentication approach and institute a rapid response system to ensure that their customers’ data is always secure.

Behavioural biometric intelligence allows banking organisations to prevent fraud without specifically identifying the customer as an individual. By evaluating anonymised data based on innate human patterns, behavioural biometrics does not need to identify the authorised user, but is still able to understand their behavioural habits and, in turn, determine if they are being impersonated or scammed.

A collective approach to defending against scams

Ultimately, individuals, governments and organisations all have a role to play in reducing the prevalence of scams. Taking the necessary steps to implement the right tools while also channelling industry collaboration will be pivotal in addressing the scamming epidemic.

Organisations should:

• Take advantage of the right solutions: Implementing solutions that help individuals from falling victim to scams is vital for protection. Having advanced analysis tools can help prevent and recognise fraud and impersonation before a threat is successful. Behavioural biometric intelligence can analyse a range of patterns to detect suspicious discrepancies, from when the individual is online, all the way to how they move their mouse. From there, organisations can analyse whether an account is being impersonated, and alert the individual if they are potentially being scammed.
• Promote awareness and education: Scam prevention won’t be solved in a vacuum, a multipronged approach requires that individuals are aware and educated on the current scam and threat landscape. Organisations need to actively promote scam prevention, and outline how to correctly notice and respond to a potential scam. For example, ahead of Valentine’s Day this year, NAB shared some insights on romance scams in the last year and tips on identifying a potential scammer.
• Harness collaboration: Collaboration can be addressed across three pillars to help prevent scams.
  • Firstly, strategic collaboration internally can be put into practice, ensuring every employee is understanding the necessary steps to prevent scams. Strategic collaboration can also extend to government interactions and ensuring clear communication between organisations and governments on the steps needed to be taken.
  • Secondly, technology collaboration should be utilised, where organisations can leverage the same supplies and common rules.
  • Finally, data collaboration will help further identify fraudsters and cybercriminals, as organisations can share insights with their peers to more quickly identify signs of criminals attempting to scam new victims.
     

Scams will continue to be prevalent. For organisations, their responsibility on scam prevention is now larger. Through collaboration, awareness and using the right tools such as behavioural biometrics technology, the necessary steps can be taken to play their part in successfully reducing scams.

Image credit: iStock.com/gerenme