Fiserv: Rising ACH and Wire-Transfer Fraud Demands Broader Defenses (Feb. 25, 2014)
Fraud associated with ACH transactions and wire transfers is on the rise, creating fresh challenges for financial institutions already grappling with higher risks from data breaches, malware and account hijacking, according to Fiserv. It’s just another headache when combined with ongoing threats from money laundering, identity theft and check fraud, Mike Urban, Fiserv’s director of financial crime risk management, said during a Feb. 24 Webinar, “Electronic Payment Fraud—How to Create a Robust Defense.”
“We’re in a rapidly changing crime landscape, where financial institutions need to operate from the perspective that customers’ [computers] and devices may always be compromised by some kind of intrusion, whether they know it or not,” Urban said. Fraudsters continually try to attack corporations to intercept sensitive data, such as email addresses, phone numbers, address information and passwords that can be used to craft intricate fraud schemes to steal funds through legitimate-seeming transactions, he noted.
Financial institutions typically use a layered approach to fight fraud, but Urban said the rising level of risk from all directions requires broadening the defenses already in place and making sure fraud-detection systems are operating in real time. To meet the rising risks from increasingly inventive new fraud schemes, Fiserv in December added new features to its Financial Crime Risk Management platform, enabling users to add new fields and data streams quickly to analyze sudden and suspicious new trends, and send queries in real time to verify that pending transactions are legitimate, Urban said.
