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In the case of an account takeover, both individuals and larger organizations face serious threats and consequences regarding their reputation and online security. As fraudsters’ tactics become more advanced and sophisticated, it’s important to know the best fraud detection methods, what the motives are behind account takeovers, and methods of detection.  As the world moves increasingly online–both for professional and personal use–the risk of an account getting hacked and personal...

Age verification is a security method by which a company can verify the age of customers before they access websites, content, and e-commerce that is suitable only for adults, including alcohol and tobacco products, gaming/gambling, social media, dating websites, adult content, and more. Proper age verification is crucial to promote the online safety of minors and can include date of birth confirmation, ID document verification, selfie verification, and more. Age...

Anti-Money Laundering or AML refers to a set of laws, regulations, and procedures that target money laundering. The financial industry must comply with these legal requirements to monitor for and report suspicious activities that may be tied to money laundering, meaning they often must implement sophisticated customer due diligence plans. What is Anti Money Laundering (AML)? Anti-Money Laundering (or AML) refers to a set of laws, regulations, and procedures centered...

Prior to the passage of the Bank Secrecy Act, there was no legislation of its kind that existed in the United States, offering limited oversight in regard to anti-money laundering (AML). As a result, this lack of regulation provided criminal enterprises with the opportunity to make illicit financial transactions mostly under the radar.  Thus, as a way to bolster the integrity of the financial system and provide the government with...

Behavioral Analytics a technique that uses machine learning, big data, artificial intelligence, and analytics to identify patterns and anomalies in human behavior. Instances of fraud are on the rise across all industries, putting merchants, governments, and individuals on alert to protect their sensitive data and assets. More specifically, fraud is impacting many online merchants as e-commerce shopping has grown rapidly since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.  As fraud...

Biometric verification technology utilizes physical characteristics, including but not limited to fingerprint, facial scan, retina scan, etc. to identify someone. Biometric technology is increasingly used in security processes to authenticate and re authenticate users to ensure a user is who they say they are. What is Biometric Verification? Biometric verification is a way for individuals to be identified based on one or more of their unique biological characteristics. This method...

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Fraud encapsulates any fraudulent activity related to buy now, pay later platforms. BNPL fraud occurs mainly two categories: attacks on payment systems themselves, and fraud during onboarding for BNPL platforms.  The Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) market has grown substantially over recent years, largely spurred on by the pandemic and increased online shopping trends. In fact, between 2022 and 2026, the BNPL market size is...

The prevalence of credit card fraud is on the rise. In fact, it’s now estimated that 65% of credit card holders have been victims of fraud at some point in their lives. At the same time, online shopping is becoming more commonplace, and individuals no longer have to present a physical card to a merchant to make a transaction. In turn, this creates further opportunities for fraudulent activity.  Though it’s...

Consent Management is a process, system, or policy that informs users about the data collection and usage practices of companies they do business with or use. It logs and tracks consent collection to comply with current privacy regulations, including GDPR and CCPA. A Consent Management Platform is a solution that helps companies collect and manage this information. A consent management platform, also known as a “CMP”, is used by websites...

Continuous authentication is a way of verifying a user’s identity in real-time. It works by collecting data about the user and feeding it into an algorithm. The algorithm then determines whether the user is who they claim to be. With standard authentication, users enter some credentials (such as their username and password) when they begin a session. They are then authenticated and granted access to whatever resource they are trying...

Customer authentication verifies identities to prevent unauthorized access to systems or data. This process helps secure transactions both in-person and digitally. What Is Customer Authentication? Customer authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user or customer before granting access to systems, services, or sensitive data. This critical step ensures that only authorized individuals can access resources, which protects businesses from fraud, data breaches, and unauthorized access. For...

To meet anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) guidelines, financial institutions must ensure they’ve verified the identities of their customers, the type of activities they’re involved in, and where their funds come from. This is called customer due diligence, which helps organizations manage risk and ensure they’re only serving legitimate customers who aren’t involved in illegal activities like terrorism financing, human trafficking, or money laundering. Below, we’ll discuss...

Deep Fake technology is a new and emerging type of AI that can be used to generate unique content for a wide range of purposes. However, the general discussion around Deep Fakes has been about the risks that it poses to society. Even still, there are a number of legitimate use cases for Deep Fakes, which we will discuss in more detail below.  There has been some rising concern about...

A digital identity is an online likeness or an electronic file that contains personally identifiable information, or PII. The Digital Identity is an identity utilized in cyberspace across a variety of communities, businesses, and workflows. It is comprised of attributes including but not limited to username/password, social security number, date of birth, online activities (search, transactions, purchasing history, behavior), and medical history. This identity is often linked to an individual’s...

A digital identity wallet is an application downloaded onto your mobile device that securely holds and encrypts various identity assets containing private information. The application allows users to access pertinent personal documents without carrying an original, physical copy. Identity validation assets include items like your driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, insurance card, social security card and more. When asked to verify your identity with a digital identity wallet, you would...

With document verification, an entity confirms the validity of an official document, often as part of identity verification processes. Document verification practices are not a new security measure, though they continue to evolve for the digital age with the help of automated identify verification solutions that work much more quickly and efficiently than manual checks. What is Document Verification? Document verification is the process of confirming the validity of an...

Organizations leverage modern technology to streamline various back-office processes, and eIDV is the latest solution to help make the identity verification process more efficient. What Is Electronic Identity Verification (eIDV)? Electronic identity verification (eIDV) refers to the process of using a computerized system to verify an individual’s identity against public records and private databases. An eIDV search will consider the person’s information, such as their name, address, date of birth,...

eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) is the automated, digital process for customer identity verification, which serves as an alternative to the traditional, physical document-based Know Your Customer (KYC) process. Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations targeting anti-money laundering (AML) have been in place for decades now, and were only further strengthened following the 9/11 attacks as an effort to fight terrorism financing (CTF) with the Patriot Act.   Ensuring that the financial...

Financial services organizations must navigate through a complex regulatory environment to ensure compliance and uphold customer security. This includes adhering to the Customer Due Diligence (CDD) Requirements for Financial Institutions (the CDD Rule), which began enforcement in May 2018. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) introduced this rule as a way to improve transparency in the industry and combat money laundering and financing for terrorist organizations. While the CDD Rule...

Face verification is a task in which you determine whether two facial images belong to the same unique individual. This task can be accomplished via machine learning for decisioning. From smartphones to banking applications, using your face to “unlock” devices and apps has been around for a few decades now. Appreciated for its user convenience and high level of security, face verification continues to see widespread adoption across industries. What...

Facial authentication, also known as facial verification, is a facial biometrics category that relies on a “one-to-one” matching technology. Facial authentication matches a person’s face to a previously verified image from a trusted source, like a government ID or previously enrolled and authenticated biometric selfie, with the user’s consent. This form of biometric authentication is primarily used for account protection and security. How does Facial Authentication Work? Facial authentication technology...

Facial biometrics is a broad umbrella term that encompasses both facial recognition and facial authentication. Facial biometrics are ways to authenticate a user’s identity based on their face. Facial biometric software captures, analyzes and verifies identities via comparison to either a database (recognition) or single photograph (authentication). The technology accomplishes this by collecting unique biometric data of each person. Two prominent technologies used today fall under the category of Facial...

Facial Liveness Detection is the use of a computer vision technology to detect fake or non-real faces when using facial biometric technology/software for authentication. It is the technology’s ability to analyze and detect if it is an actual living person taking a photo or video of themselves in real time.  How Does Facial Liveness Detection work? To ensure the genuine presence of a living user and not a spoof, Presentation...

Facial recognition is a biometric verification category that relies on a “one to many” match. This form of biometric technology detects and locates the image of a face, captures and analyzes it, converts it to data, and compares it against a database of other known faces. Facial recognition has various law enforcement applications; police, for example, deploy facial recognition when seeking a match for a potential witness or suspect out...

The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) is Canada’s financial intelligence unit that is responsible for monitoring and investigating financial transactions. The purpose of the organization is to detect and prevent money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.  In December 2001, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA) went into effect as an amendment of the existing Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering)...

Compared to other types of fraud where we envision individuals being the target victims while criminals steal their personal information to perform fraudulent activities, First-Party Fraud is different in that the individual themself is the perpetrator. These individuals are often trying to mislead financial institutions. They may even be working with organized crime rings on a larger scale.  As technology today becomes more advanced, First-Party Fraud tactics are only becoming...

Fraud Detection is a process or set of processes that analyzes, detects, and prevents fraud threats to a business. These threats are aimed at obtaining money or property and can include identity theft, fraudulent purchases, insurance scams, cyberattacks, money laundering, and more. Fraud detection is most effective when it is a comprehensive, multifaceted approach that can include one or more of the following: fraud detection software, company policies, employee training....

Fraud Monitoring is the process of tracking all activity across workflows and a customer journey: from initial login and transactions, to ensure no fraudulent activity is taking place. This monitoring evaluates actions and events, including account changes, user changes, transactions, and device registrations. Typically, a fraud monitoring system will flag suspicious activity or anomalies in user behavior to stop fraudulent activity and reduce or stop the loss of money, operational...

Friendly fraud, also known as first-party fraud, can take many different forms, but it generally entails an actual consumer purchasing goods or services from a business and then making false claims. These claims can include the purchase or the delivery of the goods, the need for a refund as a result of the false claim, or the fact that they only received a portion of the ordered goods to keep...

ID validation, or identity document (ID) validation, is the process of verifying a provided national ID, driver’s license or passport to ensure authenticity and validity. This verification process is completed via software that uses machine vision, AI, and document library, among other sources, to determine authenticity of the identity document. Software will scan and extract content from documents and analyze to validate. ID validation is typically used as part of...

Identity Access Management is the process of managing, recording, and controlling all the ways people interact with your company’s network. It’s a complex system that controls authorization and authentication, which is essential to minimizing risk. Authorization is when you grant access to certain parts of your company’s network and infrastructure to certain people. This can mean giving employees or third parties access to accounts on your website or allowing them...

Identity Assurance Level or IAL refers to the levels of confidence or assurance that a system can have in a user’s identity and credentials. There are three levels used as measurement in the identity proofing process: These levels are determined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory federal agency that serves to inform, protect, and enforce cybersecurity standards. Identity Assurance Levels (IAL) falls under NIST Special...

Identity authentication is an essential part of many security frameworks, both on and offline. What is Identity Authentication? Identity authentication is the process of verifying that an individual is the authorized user before they can access a network or system, complete a transaction, or initiate a high-risk action. The goal of identity authentication is to safeguard accounts, resources, and sensitive information from unauthorized access.  When completing identity authentication, a person...

Identity decisioning is the process of determining if a customer is authentic in onboarding, transaction monitoring and credit underwriting. Companies in the financial and adjacent industries will need adequate decisioning to meet KYC/AML compliance requirements, mitigate fraud, and evaluate risk when onboarding new customers. Identity decisioning is often automated via an Identity Decisioning Platform, which is a comprehensive system for identity and risk management decisions. Identity decisioning enables financial institutions...

Identity fraud occurs when a bad actor uses stolen personal, private, and/or financial information to make fraudulent transactions. How bad actors can obtain a user’s identity occurs in a variety of ways, including both physical and digital means. A bad actor can utilize a fake ID, false credit card or bank accounts, fraudulent transactions, and a fake criminal record. Identity fraud continues to grow, with a tremendous impact on users...

Identity management is how an organization identifies and authenticates individuals for access to its network or applications. This process will ensure individuals and groups have the right access, rights, and restrictions with established identities for these organizational resources while keeping those assets and their data secure. Identity management systems include software, hardware, and procedures used to identify and authorize a person or persons that need access to applications, systems, networks,...

Identity orchestration is the framework that businesses can use to weave a variety of identities together in a multi-cloud environment. Identity Orchestration allows businesses to enable consistent identity and access to a business’s apps and/or services, regardless of which identity system is used. Identity orchestration requires dynamic user journeys for IAM across the entire identity lifecycle, including fraud detection, identity proofing, and identity authentication. Identity Orchestration Defined Identity Orchestration solutions...

Identity proofing is the process of verifying an individual’s identity, either in person or online. It’s sometimes called identity authentication or ID proofing. Identity proofing is helpful for any entity that needs to verify the identities of its customers, contractors, employees, partners, and more. Identity proofing may be used for any online or physical system that requires authentication, such as credit card accounts or health records. It is also used...

Injection attacks pose significant security risks to applications, websites, and other systems. Though they were originally discovered in the late 1990s, decades later, cybercriminals continue to execute injection attacks as a way to exfiltrate data, compromise or modify databases, and engage in other exploitative activities for their personal gain. What Is an Injection Attack? Injection attacks are a common type of cybersecurity incident where the attacker inserts malicious code or...

A lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and generate.

Although Know Your Business compliance is relatively new in the United States (since 2016), it plays an important role in upholding the integrity of the economy and keeping crime organizations from getting access to valuable financing. Thus, the implications of Know Your Business regulations are extremely widespread, even concerning public safety. Knowing who your corporate clients are is an important, and often required, aspect of doing business today. Having a...

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a set of standards and regulations used by financial institutions to make sure that they’re doing business with a legitimate, law-abiding person or entity. When you open a bank account, apply for a credit card, or take out a loan, the financial institution you do business with will ask you to provide some personal information—namely, your Social Security number and proof of your identity (AKA your...

Not all threats to a company’s security come from bad actors outside the organization. Unfortunately, individuals who already have access to company systems and networks may be a lurking threat, waiting for the right opportunity to initiate their attack. In fact, according to some estimates, upwards of 37.45% of cybersecurity incidents stem from internal actors. Luckily, organizations aren’t helpless against internal attacks. Implementing Know Your Employee (KYE) practices in the...

The Know Your Seller (KYS) process is how online marketplaces verifies the identity of the sellers using their platform. In the United States, online marketplaces are required under the INFORM Consumers Act to Online marketplaces are not immune to the rising incidence of fraud in the modern business landscape. Fraudulent sellers and bad actors listing stolen goods or purposefully misrepresenting items for sale online cause widespread damage to consumers, the...

Knowledge Based Authentication or KBA for short is a security process that requires asking users for answers to personal information questions to authenticate their identity when accessing accounts or services. Users are required to answer questions that only the individual would know the answer to; for example, secret phrases, names of relatives, or prior transactions. There are three types of KBA: What Is Knowledge-Based Authentication? Privacy concerns and increasing cyberattacks...

Liveness Detection is the use of a computer vision technology to detect fake or non-real faces when using facial recognition biometric technology/software for authentication. It is the technology’s ability to analyze and detect if it is an actual living person taking a photo or video of themselves in real time.  How does Liveness Detection work? To ensure the genuine presence of a living user and not a spoof, Presentation Attack...

Model Governance is a pillar of operational integrity and reliability. From financial institutions to retail giants, organizations across industries are increasingly reliant on machine learning models—complex algorithms and statistical tools—to predict outcomes, optimize processes, and drive strategic initiatives. Model governance is borne from a need for robust governance frameworks to oversee these models, which can create organizational risk. What is Model Governance? Model governance refers to the framework of practices,...

Multi-Factor Authentication, or MFA for short, is a security system that aims to provide an extra layer of protection for your account. It requires you to confirm your identity in at least two separate ways when logging in to your account: The goal is to make it harder for people other than yourself to access your account. Imagine someone steals your password—if they don’t also have your fingerprint or the...

Passwordless authentication refers to a method that allows users to log in to an application or IT system without the use of a password. By this method, users can authenticate themselves via physical security keys, apps, or biometrics. This process eliminates the need to create or remember a static password to both provide a better, more streamlined user experience and increased security due to eliminating the vulnerability of passwords. How...

Fraudsters continue to find new ways to exploit security system vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and networks. One specific method used to deceive biometric authentication is a presentation attack. While biometric verification is considered one of the most secure forms of authentication today, it is not a foolproof method for security. However, this doesn’t make it a foolproof security method. Presentation attacks are a threat to many...

A privileged access management (PAM) tool is a solution that mitigates any risk of privileged access via monitoring, detecting, and/or preventing unauthorized access to system resources. As an organization expands and adds new users with new permissions over the years, they can quickly lose sight of all accounts that have elevated privileges and access to sensitive data.  At the same time, incidents of cyber attacks are on the rise, posing...

Proof of Identity is a very important concept throughout the cybersecurity world. It is an idea that helps maintain the security and integrity of digital systems. As such, it can be applied in a variety of contexts, which we will explore in further detail below.  What Is Proof of Identity? In a cybersecurity context, Proof of Identity refers to the process of verifying and validating an individual’s identity.  This can...

Verifying users’ identities during the account registration process helps to confirm who they are and ensure they aren’t using a stolen or fake identity to engage in fraudulent activities. However, this initial check isn’t all that’s necessary to protect an organization from fraud and ensure compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. A user’s personal details may change over time as they move or get married, meaning organizations need to...

An important cybersecurity practice that keeps your online accounts safe, Reauthentication is widely used across the web today and provides various benefits that you may not even be aware of. What Is Reauthentication? Reauthentication is a cybersecurity concept that refers to the process of requiring users to offer additional verification or authentication credentials to regain their access to a system, application, or account that they have already been logged into. ...

Not every type of fraud has a clear victim. Sometimes, the person whose identity is being used in fraudulent activities is just as involved as the person actually committing the illicit actions. This type of scheme is called second-party fraud, and the victim in this scenario is typically the organization or institution where the fraudulent activity takes place. What is Second-Party Fraud? Second-party fraud occurs when an individual allows another...

Verifying individuals’ identities when they’re in person is straightforward. They can provide you with a driver’s license or other form of photo identification, and you can verify that the person presenting the document is the same individual shown in the document. Identity verification gets a bit more complicated for online services. It becomes harder to verify that the person providing identification documents is the true identity holder. After all, it...

Synthetic Fraud is a complex form of identity theft that occurs when a fraudster uses a combination of both fake and legitimate personal information or legitimate personal information from more than one individual to create a false or “synthetic” identity to build credit, make fraudulent purchases, and more. This process could combine a stolen Social Security Number with a fake address, date of birth, or new phone number. Synthetic Fraud...

What Is Third Party Fraud? Third-party fraud occurs when a bad actor uses someone else’s identifying information to fraudulently open a new account in their name without the victim’s knowledge. This type of fraud is more commonly known as identity theft and is highly prevalent in the financial services industry. Fraudsters may use a victim’s identity to secure credit or loan products with no intention of making any repayments. The...

Two Factor Authentication, also known as 2FA, is a two-step verification, or dual-factor authentication security process that requires users to provide two different types of credentials for authentication. Two Factor Authentication is designed to provide an additional layer of validation than methods that use one (namely a password). This authentication method relies on the user providing a password and a second factory, either a biometric scan or security token. Two...

In today’s digital world, documents, photos, and videos can be easily doctored using deep fake technology or Photoshop. While this can be innocent when used purely for entertainment purposes, the reality is that bad actors and criminals can get their hands on this technology just like the rest of us, making it easier for them to defraud unwitting victims. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to trust that people...

Even though the world has moved largely online, organizations still need a way to confirm customers’ and users’ identities to meet regulatory requirements and prevent fraudulent activity. At the same time, advanced technology like AI and deepfakes allow fraudsters to create hyperrealistic spoof documents, making it even more difficult for human reviewers to detect the subtle nuances that indicate fraud is underway. Digital verified identity systems are becoming more widely...

Zero trust security is an IT framework that secures all access across corporate networks and environments by the default assertion that no user or application can be trusted. Verification is required from anyone attempting to gain access to a network. Zero trust utilizes continuous monitoring and validation, least privilege access, strict controls on device access, multi-factor authentication, and micro-segmentation. This architecture allows for simpler network infrastructure, improved user experience, and...

Zero-Knowledge Proofs offer strong assurances of authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality, all while preserving the confidentiality of protected information–which is why they have become so popular in cybersecurity today.  As cybercriminals become more sophisticated with their tactics and traditional username-password methods of Proof of Identity become weaker, the power of Zero-Knowledge Proofs could prove monumental for the industry.  While the definition of Zero-Knowledge Proofs can be elusive, they are actually quite...