Banks are Moving Beyond Passwords: Fraud Management with Behavioral Biometrics.

The digital age has forever changed the way consumers interact with banks but it has also created a new set of risks for IT security. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated and innovative in their tactics, targeting weaker points in the IT system to gain access to sensitive customer data.

Nowadays fraudsters target consumers instead of banks because it has become harder to circumvent the bank's security.

In spite of the growing threat, many companies still struggle on how to handle client-side cyber security. Banks invest a considerable amount of resources in protecting the system but they have always been bad at educating customers how to protect their accounts.?

The banking industry is not alone in its struggle. The cyber security industry as a whole is addressing the same challenge, which has become more challenging than ever before. Traditional cyber security was about protecting front-end systems and servers, today it's also about protecting users.

This is why banks should view their users as a new front line of security. In the past, banks used signature-based technologies to identify cyber threats and most of them still use it even though such solutions lack the ability to differentiate between legitimate user activities and attacks by malware or other malicious software. Which means that security admins end up with a ton of false positives, which slow down the reaction time when fraudsters strike and cost banks substantial loss in terms of customer goodwill.?

The industry’s need for new cyber security approaches has resulted in the emergence of behavioral biometrics, a technology that can detect anomalies in user’s behaviour. It has become the go-to solution for detecting malicious intrusions and data breaches at large organizations. Behavioral biometrics can be used to create electronic dossiers on customers that track their activities, enabling banks to identify suspicious patterns in banking sessions or any attempt by cyber criminals to manipulate a customer’s account.?

The solution is also able to identify anomalies in user’s behavior by analyzing the sequence and speed of keystrokes, mouse movements, scrolling activity and other interaction heuristics.?

Using behavioral biometrics as a front line of defence enables banks to reduce false positives while significantly improving their response times to attacks. In some cases, banks may be able to stop an attack before the malware or cyber criminal can even execute a fraudulent transaction, it gives them the ability to detect and prevent fraud before it happens.

In addition, behavioral biometrics is able to identify individuals who have been locked out of their accounts by their own actions or those who may be unaware that they are being manipulated.?

Characteristics of Behavioral Biometric Solutions

Behavioral biometrics has characteristics that set it apart from other approaches to security. The most important ones are:?

1) It can detect anomalies in user’s behavior, which is how the majority of cyber attacks are detected in the first place;

2) It can act proactively, and does not rely on a specific threat or attack to identify suspicious activity. This is an important factor that sets it apart from signature-based solutions;

3) It is not intrusive, meaning it does not require users to change how they typically interact with the bank.?

Conclusion

The development of new technologies like biometrics and artificial intelligence will play a critical role in the future of banking because they have great potential to give consumers more control over their accounts, protect them from fraudsters and streamline customer experience for the better. Banks should consider deploying behavioral biometrics as part of their fraud management strategy.