In a crisp explanation of account takeover and authentication risks, George and Robert Capps, Vice President, Market Innovation, at NuData Security. They discuss the findings of a recent NuData report and its experience with the sophistication of online fraudsters. NuData’s techniques are all about foiling cybercriminals as they bang at the front door of financial institutions, merchants, streaming services, and more.
Payments on Fire® listeners know that we’ve been taking a steady look at fraud issues over the past few years. Fraudsters have been pouncing on every opportunity, taking advantage of pandemic relief payments as well as the shift from card present to card not present, remote commerce transactions. If this topic didn’t matter, we wouldn’t be talking about it.
Measuring and detecting what the fraudsters are up to and their impact is critical. To better understand what’s going on, we speak with Robert Capps, Vice President, Market Innovation, at NuData Security, a company that specializes in behavioral biometrics.
NuData published in Q3/2020 its e report on cybersecurity trends. And the findings are really interesting.
What They FoundThe current scourge is account takeover. ATO is a concern for financial institutions, for retailers, streaming media companies, and more.
Attack method sophistication goes well beyond reuse of stolen user IDs and brute force password guessing.
It is an arms race of increasingly complex and sophisticated attack and detection techniques.
NuData and others have expertise in behavioral analytics, tools that detect, among other things, bots that are build to emulate human interactions at the account login page. The use of CAPTCHA is one technique to deter these attacks. But the fraudsters have responded, going so far as to establish call center-scale operations with staff endlessly filling in CAPTCHA forms to add the human touch and smarts in what are otherwise highly automated ATO attacks. This is human farming to get around CAPTCHA and other rudimentary defenses.
Financial institutions and retailers aren’t the only targets. In this age of stay at home orders, streaming services have become targets of opportunity. Parasitic use of streaming service accounts has risen as the fraudsters sell streaming service account credentials.
The Defender’s Balancing ActThere are dedicated professionals working on both sides. But the defenders have the harder job. Besides having to protect every door and window, they also have to keep it simple for good users to transact. Adding friction to a transaction flow increases the shopping cart abandonment rate. That’s bad for the ecommerce merchant and insults the customer. It’s a tough balancing act.
Part of that balance is handled by “step up” authentication based on the level of risk. A bank might let a session proceed to a balance inquiry without asking for further customer input. But if a new payee is added to the account, the bank might insist on sending a one time code to the customer via email or SMS.
Getting to Good ASAPProviders of authentication services see activity from a lot of devices. Building profiles based on these devices and the many variables surrounding each transaction, they use the profiles to efficiently track the behavior of each in order to separate the known good profile from the questionable.
A technique to “get to good” faster is to pool that profiling information in anonymized form from across all of the clients who agree to participate.
COVID ImpactRobert discusses the shifts in fraud given the pandemic. As a percentage of transactions, fraud increased substantially in the travel segment. And for those retailers operating in the physical world the shift to e-commerce was sometimes overwhelming. That’s a story we’ve heard a lot at Glenbrook. Check out our COVID Series book.
Podcast transcript
Episode 238 - Will Pay by Bank Really Compete with Cards? Trevor Nies, Adyen
Episode 237 - Is Orchestration the New Normal In Payment Operations? A conversation with John Lunn, Gr4vy
Episode 236 - How to Make Money in Payments with Russ Jones, Glenbrook Partners
Episode 235 - Taking Stock in Fast Payments with Gregor Dobbie, CEO of TFPA and former CEO of Vocalink
Episode 234 - Partnerships in the Payments Industry - Insights, Musings, and Hard-Won Wisdom with Steve Klebe
Episode 233 - How unexpected technology combinations can lead to practical payment solutions with Glendy Kam, Tassat
Episode 232 - Talking Payments and Fraud with Julie Fergerson, Merchant Risk Council
Episode 231 - Fanning the Flames: Payments Orchestration
Episode 230 - Talking Central Bank Digital Currencies with Jim Cunha, Former EVP, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Episode 229: What Glenbrook is Watching in Payments in 2024
Episode 228 - Fanning the Flames: 2023 Payments News in Review
Episode 227 - EMVCo: A Textbook Example of Collaboration with Oliver Manahan, EMVCo
Episode 226 - From the Vault: Talking EMV in the USA (Episode 16)
Episode 225 - Fanning the Flames: Money 20/20 Recap
Episode 224 - Creating Best-in-Class Payment Experiences at Scale with Luda Sokolov and Aarti Bharathan, Google
Episode 223 - Fanning the Flames: Merchant Fees and Surcharging
Episode 222 - Fanning the Flames: Involuntary Churn
Episode 221 - The Future of Fast Payments in the U.S. with Bernadette Ksepka, Federal Reserve Financial Services and Elena Whisler, The Clearing House
Episode 220 - Stay Ahead of the Game: Understanding and Countering Policy Abuse with Eyal Elazar, Riskified
Episode 219 - Smart Takes on Cross-border Payments - Ryan Zagone, Head of Americas, Wise for Banks, and Joanna Wisniecka, Glenbrook
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
Aligned Money Show
Gorse Culture PODcast : The H.R. Detective Agency!
HCI Leadership Revolution
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money