Fraud and fraud have increased significantly since the pandemic, with mature markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong facing increasingly complex challenges such as sanctioned push payment fraud and deepfakes.
Stephen Topliss, vice president of fraud and identity at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, says organizations can take a multifaceted approach that combines cutting-edge technology and cross-industry collaboration to combat evolving fraud trends in Southeast Asia. They say they need to hire and share their risk insights.
Challenges related to fraud still exist. Mr. Topliss highlighted the prevalence of fraud and fraud and the prevalence of LexisNexis risk solutions. 2024 Cybercrime Report confirms this trend, revealing that the rate of human-generated digital attacks globally will increase by 19% year-on-year in 2024.
Fraud is rampant in Southeast Asia
Topliss highlighted that authorized push payment fraud is on the rise in Southeast Asia, where fraudsters exploit human vulnerabilities to initiate fraudulent transactions.
Organized crime groups, primarily from China, operate cyber fraud centers in countries such as Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar.
These groups often impersonate legitimate organizations such as government agencies, banks, and technology companies to trick victims into providing sensitive information, making payments, or downloading malicious software. Masu.
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance and ScamAdviser have produced the 2023 Global Scam Report, with 78% of global respondents reporting encountered At least one scam occurred in the past 12 months, with 59% reporting encountering a scam every month.
The average financial losses per victim were highest for Singaporeans (US$4,031), Swiss (US$3,767) and Austrians (US$3,484). Around the world, fraud costs an estimated US$1.26 trillion, equivalent to 1.05% of global gross domestic product (GDP).
Topliss highlighted the rise in authorized push payment fraud and identified deepfake technology as a growing fraud threat in Southeast Asia. Deepfakes, which use artificial intelligence (AI) to create convincingly fake images, videos, or audio recordings, can help prevent fraud by making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between real and fake content. poses major challenges.
Topliss emphasized that fraud has an impact beyond financial losses, saying it undermines consumer trust in online interactions, fuels growing anxiety and ultimately hinders the growth of the digital economy. He explained that it was a possibility.
“People are now becoming more cautious when going online, and there’s also a greater sense of fear that scammers are constantly coming through,” Toplis said.
“Today, for organizations in the digital space, a loss of trust can have a greater financial impact than the loss of money due to fraud.”
Combat fraud in Southeast Asia with technology
Topliss emphasized that technology providers like LexisNexis Risk Solutions play a critical role in fraud prevention, noting that effective strategies in today’s climate rely on advanced technology and data analytics.
Mr. Topliss emphasized the importance of flexibility in anti-fraud platforms and emphasized the need to integrate different data sources. He explained that incorporating external data and connecting to specific tools enhances the system’s ability to identify advanced fraud.
He explained that technology platforms include: LexisNexis® ThreatMetrix® Analyze complex fraud patterns and correlations using diverse data sources and AI-driven models to deliver highly accurate risk insights in real-time to support risk decisions.
Another product, LexisNexis® BehaviorSec® Analyze data from users’ online interactions to create unique digital risk signals, provide insights into users’ past online behavior, and determine whether the person behind atypical behavior has malicious intent I will. Both products are on the LexisNexis® Dynamic Decision Platform®. LexisNexis® Digital Identity Network®.
Topliss emphasized that a comprehensive solution must incorporate AI to generate dynamically updated, anonymized digital identities, each with its own risk profile. A properly linked digital identity presents a comprehensive view of an individual’s online presence and helps businesses assess the trustworthiness of users’ digital interactions. AI can help detect synthetic or stolen identities, identify anomalous behavior such as location anomalies, and flag new email addresses to shipping addresses from the same device, helping organizations identify potential fraud. Helps you evaluate.
Topliss explained that this intelligence identifies fraudulent activity, builds trust by recognizing legitimate activity, and improves the customer experience by minimizing friction with genuine users.
“AI-powered multi-layered tools connect individual dots of digital intelligence leading to a better understanding of digital personas, which helps look for anomalies,” Topliss said.
“In e-commerce, we’ve reduced manual reviews by 26-27%, which means more customers get their products faster, which clearly translates to increased revenue and reduced cart abandonment rates.”
The need for industry collaboration
Topliss also highlighted the limitations of individual banks in combating fraud, saying banks’ visibility is often limited to customer activity within each bank’s ecosystem. I pointed it out.
The Digital Identity Network® addresses this issue by dynamically and continuously updating digital identities across participating institutions, allowing banks to identify patterns and anomalies that are often overlooked.
This feature is important in identifying money mules, the intermediaries hired by fraudsters to transfer stolen money between accounts, obfuscating its origins and preventing authorities from tracing funds back to the perpetrators. play a role.
Collaboration across the banking industry is essential to identifying mules, as pooling data allows banks to track the movement of funds and flag suspicious accounts that may not individually trigger alerts. .
“Banks need to investigate where funds are being sent, often to accounts outside the institution, so there is minimal information about those accounts,” Toplis said. said.
“Joining a global collaboration and data network will change the game by strengthening our ability to effectively address these risks through increased collaboration.”
Featured image credit: Edited from freepic
