Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Boost in Criminal Fraud Activity in 2021 and Beyond
By Terry Nelms, PhD, Sr. Director of Research, Pindrop
2020 was anything but predictable, with COVID-19 changing every aspect of our lives. For contact centers — typically not set up for remote working — the past year saw a rapid and challenging shift to working from home, skyrocketing call volumes, and changing fraud tactics. As contact centers look to the new year, they will need to leverage new technologies and adopt new protocols to ensure they’re prepared for increasing IVR and cross-channel fraud as well as emerging threats such as deepfakes.
Here are three predictions to help contact centers prepare for the new year:
Increasing fraud in the IVR
Fueled by COVID-19 and pressures to improve the customer experience, more organizations are incorporating IVR (interactive voice response) systems back into contact center environments to handle the increased level of call volume brought on by the pandemic. However, this has introduced heightened fraud risks, with more criminals slowly stealing customer data from IVRs in order to commit future fraud. According to a new report by Forrester and Pindrop, 80% of firms noted that fraud is a very serious issue in the call center – and for 78% of them, solving fraud in the IVR is their top call center initiative. In order to keep up with new and evolving omnichannel threats, in 2021 and beyond, more organizations will implement advanced machine learning-driven fraud detection account risk monitoring solutions that identify suspicious activity earlier, increase customer trust and reduce fraud instances and losses.
Combating cross-channel cybercrime
Cybercriminals continue to become more and more organized, targeting various customer engagement points to steal data that they can later use to commit cross-channel fraud. Leveraging machine-to-machine vulnerabilities and tactics that combine IVR reconnaissance with phishing and vishing scams, fraudsters are slowly gathering data to perform account takeover (ATO) across channels, and once they have enough information, they can use it to commit fraud across other channels. This type of fraud can be extremely difficult to track. According to new research Aite Group conducted with Pindrop, contact centers are often the least protected delivery channel in financial institutions and are frequently the source of cross-channel fraud. In order to better defend against cross-channel fraud attacks in 2021 and beyond, more organizations will incorporate graph analytics into their fraud monitoring and detection capabilities to effectively map out and identify the most complicated fraud scams and predict cross-channel fraud before it occurs.
Duped by deepfakes?
Artificial intelligence has created new security threats, the greatest of which may be deepfakes. Deepfakes are fake audio, video, or images that rely on artificial intelligence technology to mimic reality. Deepfakes can have serious consequences in the wrong hands, such as deepfake fraud. While we haven’t seen many of these attacks yet, in 2019, fraudsters used deepfake audio to steal over $200,000 from a UK-based energy company. And with remote work environments giving fraudsters more ammunition to carry out their attacks, 2021 will be the year that technology unleashes real-time audio transcription and businesses will have to remain vigilant to ensure they don’t get scammed. Businesses should be wary of any suspicious phone calls, and never send money or share sensitive information without verifying that a caller is who they claim to be. Additionally, setting up basic cybersecurity tools and protocols can prevent fraudsters from gaining access to the sensitive information they need to create deepfake images and audio in the first place. Cybersecurity researchers are working on tools to detect deepfake content, but until then, companies will need to rely on their intuition and existing cybersecurity tools to make sure they don’t get duped.
Navigating the New Normal
While it is difficult to predict exactly what 2021 will hold, we can be sure that fraudsters and their ever-evolving tactics aren’t going anywhere. Whether at home or in the office, contact centers will need to remain vigilant and ensure they are using the latest technologies to detect and stop fraud.
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About the Author
Terry Nelms is the Senior Director of Research at Pindrop where he leads a team of applied researchers solving challenging problems in fraud detection and authentication. Prior to joining Pindrop, he spent over a decade inventing, designing, and developing protection technologies at ISS, IBM, and Damballa. His research has produced new security products, patents, and publications in top industry and academic conferences. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Information Systems and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
