Earlier this week, the UK hosted a ministerial-level fraud summit attended by key people from a number of countries: The English speaking Five Eyes Alliance (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK), members of the G7, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea. The UK Home Office just published a summary of this gathering.
What came out of this is, I believe, the first agreed-upon global framework to tackle fraud with the specific goal of dismantling criminal networks. In terms of the content, there’s nothing terribly new here, but the plan labels fraud as a state-level transnational threat, formalising for the first time ever intended outcomes with four high-level strategic pillars:
• Pillar 1: building international understanding of the domestic and international fraud threat
• Pillar 2: empowering the public by aligning and enhancing global messaging on fraud and driving forward global coordination of returning lost funds
• Pillar 3: pursuing fraudsters acting transnationally by coordinating and increasing international law enforcement activity
• Pillar 4: recognising the role of industry in the fraud response and encouraging strong collaboration across all public and private sectors
No One Stops Fraud Alone
For vendors like BioCatch, the last two pillars are especially important. We must work more with banks and law enforcement to help them find the links between fraud and mule accounts in their investigations. We hold unique data investigators might otherwise never get to see.
Although we never hold any user identifiable data, our customers can translate it back into real-world identifiers that can be used by law enforcement. The identification and arrest of those behind recent Barclays Corporate attacks in the UK shows just how effectively law enforcement can work with bank intelligence.
All Scams Lead to Mules
Taking a step back, the rise of scams around the world now means mule accounts are increasingly the only way to link the bad guys to their crimes. Traditional cyberattack indicators no longer exist on the victim side, as customers initiate all transfers on their own devices, on their own networks, with their legitimate authentication.
The industry must collaborate, and BioCatch wants to help make this happen. We are already in conversations with the UK Home Office to share invaluable knowledge and insight gained from our relationships with all the major UK banks. Sharing our views around current and future capabilities with both government and industry – with initiatives like our bi-directional trust network – creates insights and connections that otherwise might remain unrecognized.
A Community of Fraud Fighters
In conclusion, while some might recognize this framework as yet another political grand gesture, I see it as an important milestone in defining how we should deal with fraud (and the associated money-laundering issue) at the highest level. Obviously, the lower-level implementation of these strategies will take time, but as an organisation BioCatch supports the sentiment behind them and will continue our work to globally protect customers from the ever-increasing fraud threats to the best of our ability. We are a company of dedicated fraud fighters who see it as duty to use our expertise to protect people alongside other equally motivated teams within the financial services and law enforcement.
