Earlier this week, we were reporting on a story concerning the increase of fintech fraud during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, Interpol has released a report on Covid-19 related cybercrime which has shown that more than 60% of EU member states have experienced a great increase of fraudulent domains. The websites are using the corona virus-related keywords and attempting to take advantage of the thousands of users who are searching for the Covid-19 information online.
AI Used To Mitigate Cybercrime Risk
Cybercrime has been a serious issue for years and AI is one of the main assets used in mitigating the risk. What role does AI play in all of this? It is the main player in the identity verification market that is assumed to be able to tackle cyber fraud. AI can read highly complex features such as holograms or micro text, improving the authentication credibility. Thus, theoretically, it can provide a solution. Practically, as the AI is getting smarter, so are the hackers.
Impact Of Cybercrime Globally
The large impact of cybercrime cannot be underestimated as they pose a real, long-lasting threat to both consumers and businesses. It was estimated that the financial losses connected to cybercrime will reach $3 trillion by the end of 2020 and more than 70% of businesses will fall victims to at least one cyber attack in the course of 2020. Thus, we need effective protection against the attacks that are becoming more and more prevalent.
Giant Financial Technology Companies Using AI To Minimize Cyber risk
The possibilities that AI is creating are highly important to the giant financial technology companies such as Paypal, Visa, or Mastercard, where security is the main priority and cyber fraud is frequent.
Paypal Relying On AI Algorithm
Paypal itself processes over 33 million transactions every day, and every second it is moving more than $20 000. The huge scale of its operations is challenging in terms of securing the data and the transactions. Thus, the risk management approach is relying on machine intelligence and AI. The deep learning AI algorithm manages the string of payments and spots any intrusions or abnormalities that can suggest there is a cybercrime attempt.
Visa And Mastercard Using AI-Based Approach
Visa has been using an AI-based approach since the early 1990s, being one of the first financial technology companies to do so. It is estimated that they are preventing fraudulent incidents estimated at $25 billion every year due to the power of AI.
Similarly, Mastercard experiences more than 200 cyber fraud attempts every minute. Leveraging AI for the real-time authorization mitigates that risk greatly.
Key Cyber Threats
During Covid-19, that risk is reaching record-high levels. The possible victims are not only technology giants but average citizens as well. Based on the Interpol report, the key threats include:
Online Phishing
Online scams and phishing have been existing for such a large number of years that they were pretty easily detectable to the naked eye. Having said that, with the Covid-19 pandemic and unusual times that we all live in, the emails enticing victims into providing personal data through impersonating government or health authorities have been on the rise.
Ransomware
In the first weeks of April, after much of the world has “shutdown”, there was a huge increase in ransomware attacks towards critical infrastructure and healthcare institutions. Motive? The large impact it would have during the Covid-19 pandemic, accompanied by the obvious financial gain.
Malicious Domains
Using keywords related to the Covid-19 in creating malicious domains has proven largely effective. The desperate public in huge demand for information has been browsing the web restlessly. In March 2020, a 569% growth of malicious registration was reported by the Interpol.
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