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2019 Predictions: Callsign CEO Zia Hayat Shares His New Year’s Banking Security Insights

With fraudsters rapidly growing in sophistication, the Financial Ombudsman has announced “it’s not fair” to automatically blame customers for falling victim to banking fraud. With more and more stories surfacing where scammers have been able to bypass simple security checks and move a victim’s money around freely, what can banks do to better protect their customers from the risk of fraud?

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(Callsign CEO Zia Hayat)

As seen in the recent RBS case, sim swap and call-divert fraud are popular methods of deception and allow cybercriminals access to victims’ phone numbers and bank account details to cause maximum devastation from a complete account takeover. So, how will businesses and regulators take on these issues in the next twelve months?  

Collaboration in the Market

It is important that technology vendors work collaboratively with a whole host of industries, from telcos to law enforcements to industry bodies, to help mitigate these attacks. It is only through joint efforts that the industry can truly protect consumers from the ever-persistent threat of fraud. By taking a different approach to authentication in existing Account Takeover Protection services we can begin to offer vastly improved levels of protection and ensure our digital identities remain safe.

By using extra measures such as behavioural biometrics and artificial intelligence, new technology will help the banks to understand their customers much more intelligently and adapt each individual authentication journey in real-time accordingly.

Banks and FinTechs Will Be at the Forefront of Bot Wars

In 2019, the bot wars are just beginning, and things will likely get worse before they get any better. We are now on our fourth generation of intelligent bots, with each previous generation smarter than the last. Now, with AI and other emerging technologies proliferating, along with easy and affordable access to these tools, we are entering the age of the adversarial bot that will go head-to-head with other bots in order to more accurately mimic human behaviour. What does this mean for FinTechs and other cybersecurity firms? That it’s crucial we have the necessary tools to innovate rapidly enough to at least keep up with of this new generation of bots.

Bank and FinTech Partnerships to Become the Status-Quo

Over the next year, we’ll see even more partnerships forged between FinTechs and established banks and financial institutions to incorporate more “fleet of foot” thinking. If 2018 was the year blockchain got a seat at the table, expect this to advance and mature as this kind of emerging technology becomes a key part of many burgeoning partnerships, including the M&A market in 2019 and beyond. Looking towards 2025, it’s likely this will be the status quo. With millennials’ trust in banks waning and FinTechs’ ability to offer security, agility and scalability of innovative solutions, more traditional banks are eager to join forces with disruptive technology. They realise they need to move beyond providing financial services and move towards acting like a technology company – even emulating challenger banks. Fortunately, the bank and FinTech partnership can be mutually beneficial, as FinTechs benefit from the long-standing customer trust and industry knowledge that banks can offer.

In 2019, Financial Services Go Big (for Blockchain), or Go Home

There’s no doubt that crypto currency and the notion of decentralised public and private ledgers are some of the hottest topics in tech. In 2019, we’ll see this advance even further and reach deeper into financial services as consistency, scalability and robustness issues are addressed. It’s clear – banks need to embrace this to survive.

Intelligence Changing the Face of Banking Security

Financial services firms will take greater advantage of better intelligence. This way, banks can protect their customers while still providing the seamless, friction-free service they expect from their digital experiences. Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning means tools have been developed which can remove the need for additional authentication methods by utilising Secure User Authentication methods. Rather than asking the user for information, this system relies on learning the customer’s patterns and behaviour, including location – where is the access request being made; device – is the access request being made from an authorised device; and behaviour – assessing the user’s interaction through the log-in process, from key strokes to the ‘style’ of their swipe.

Although we’re not quite ready to say goodbye to passwords completely, we are well on our way to a world where we can more intelligently and securely identify each individual – facilitating the move towards a solution that finally reduces fraud. By investing in the right tools, we are on the way to solving the identity paradox, placing banks and their customers in a much better position.

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