Yahoo Finance January 22, 2021 – How Banks Are Working to Protect You From Fraud

Often holding millions of dollars in assets, banks, credit unions and other financial institutions have large targets on their backs. However, bank thieves have largely moved beyond the days of robbing branches at gunpoint. Instead, criminals use a range of digital tools and resources to impersonate customers and hack into accounts.

“Fraudsters are getting much more advanced in their approaches,” says Ryan Leblond, manager of fraud prevention and investigations for ESL Federal Credit Union in Rochester, New York. While it can be challenging for banks and credit unions to keep up with criminals’ evolving tactics, technology is also on the institutions’ side.

Robust options now exist to ferret out potential fraud and protect customer accounts. Algorithms, artificial intelligence and biometrics have saved millions of dollars while ensuring account holders maintain convenient access to their funds.

“We have not begun to scratch the surface of the capabilities of machine learning and artificial intelligence to combat security threats,” Tcherchian says

People-Centric Systems Pose New Challenges

In the days before cloud applications, it was easier to protect data. A firewall or similar system could be adequate to keep information safe from most threats. Today, it’s different.

“As companies migrate their critical workloads and storage to the cloud, protections offered from the data center dissolve as the perimeter disappears,” says Steve Tcherchian, chief information security officer and chief product officer for XyPro, a security solutions provider.

With millions of people now accessing data from the cloud, security measures have had to adapt. Not only does a system have to keep its information safe from outside attack, but it also has to ensure all those people using it are who they say they are. These people-centric systems pose a special challenge for financial institutions.

“We want to be sure we provide education to call center staff,” Leblond says. Workers need to properly verify a person’s identity before discussing any sensitive account data. To make that easier, financial institutions are deploying new technology to flag problematic transactions or attempts at account access.

To read the full article, please visit Yahoo Finance.