Pandemic increases e-fraud and vulnerability of businesses and citizens
The health situation caused by COVID19 has forced changes in companies and a social and economic situation that has favoured an increase in cases of electronic fraud. The annual report published by the Spanish Association of Companies Against Fraud (AEECF) reveals that this situation was repeated during 2021. This document highlights that identity theft and document fraud are the most frequent scams detected by the companies of this association. We have been working at Gradiant for years on technologies that allow organizations to protect themselves against these scams. Our technology Valida allows an effective response in the fight against document and identity fraud. This solution is being used by companies from financial sector, banking, insurance and public organizations.
More than a third of companies recorded losses of millions of euros
The AEECF carried out its study by interviewing senior executives from financial, telecommunications and banking companies comparing the data for 2021 with 2020. According to 54% of participants, during 2021 fraud attempts increased. Although they did not succeed in all of these attempts, fraudsters caused financial losses between EUR 100,000 and EUR 300,000 for 46% of the organisations surveyed. Losses exceeded EUR 1 million for 36% of them.
These organisations acknowledge that the most frequent crime is customer identity fraud. The method used by fraudsters is the use of legitimate customer data to impersonate a customer. Up to 58% of AEECF members responded that this is the most recurrent scam. This is followed by document fraud, with 29%. In this case, the fraud is accomplished by modifying the details of a document.
How these frauds are accomplished?
There are documents and companies whose security can be compromised more frequently than others. Insurance companies, banks, fintechs and some public bodies are the entities most likely to be targeted by criminals.
Documents commonly forged include traveller’s cheques, certificates, rental contracts, account books, cheques, identity cards or passports, and even vehicle registration plates. The use of a credit or debit card charged to the account of the customer whose details have been stolen is one of the most common identity fraud offences.
The solution to online fraud: Valida
Given these facts, it is not surprising that the organisations surveyed by the AEECF are implementing technological tools that provide a solution to this problem. To protect themselves against electronic fraud, 55% of the companies surveyed are incorporating advanced technology for identity verification. As for advanced analytical tools, Artificial Intelligence and/or Machine Learning are also chosen by more than a third of the companies.
We’ve been developing for years different types of technologies that provide the solution to protect against electronic fraud and specifically against document and identity fraud. This is the case of Valida, a tool that uses forensic techniques based on Artificial Intelligence and analyses documents, JPEG, TIFF, BMP images and PDF files. In this way, it traces and locates forgeries of different types. For example, Valida can automatically find forgeries in identity documents (passports, national ID cards, driving licences), invoices and payment receipts. Moreover, it is able to perform this recognition without the need to compare it with the original document and without being connected to external databases. It also determines whether the document has been captured from a screen. Its implementation in a native, cross-platform or web application is very simple thanks to the easy-to-integrate API.
Ensuring user security has become a top priority for any public or private organisation. At Gradiant, we have been transferring our experience and technological solutions, such as Valida, to organisations in the health, banking and security sectors for years. Its implementation has achieved excellent results to meet today’s challenges.
