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The anonymous blackmailers may be trying to manipulate the market price of bitcoins, even if their claim to possesses Mitt Romney's tax returns is hoax.
September 6 -
How can banks be something more than utilities in a world where regulation and technology are making their old business models untenable? SWIFT's Digital Asset Grid offers one possible answer.
September 1 -
Bitcoin lets users send money nearly instantaneously, at almost no cost, and (if desired) anonymously. Getting funds in and out of the system is the hard part. That may soon change.
August 24 -
Deutsche Bank and National Australia Bank are quickly building out internal clouds, but are only dipping their toes in public cloud services.
June 18
In today's world of cybersecurity threats, fraudsters use social media to gather personal information and target vulnerable places within your organization. The criminals have no boundaries when securing illicit funds and then funneling them through financial institutions disguised as legitimate financial transactions and eventually sending wires to offshore accounts.
According to a recent Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation study, "cyberthieves have cost U.S. companies and their banks more than $15 billion in the past five years." At a recent SAS Government conference, former U.S. Treasury Special Agent John A. Cassara said, "we are witnessing a plethora of new, high-tech value transfer systems that can be abused to launder money and finance terror."
If you were asked to share your personal information, would you? Such a question is bound to trigger privacy arguments. However, what if sharing information about the bad guys (i.e., potential fraudsters and their tactics) could save your organization substantial revenue, increase customer loyalty and reduce the risk of negative publicity? Banks are discussing approaches to sharing customer data amongst themselves with some anonymity intact. With analytics, predictive variables can be narrowed down and stored in a data consortium so that more enhanced models can be built and shared to better predict new fraud schemes with contributing financial institutions.
To protect themselves, organizations and governments may need to revisit certain privacy rules. For example, in 2010 the European Parliament approved an
While U.S. consumers have been cautious to adopt mobile banking, the growth of mobile payments is expected on such apps as
According to Adam Kaufmann, executive assistant district attorney and chief of the investigation division at the New York County District Attorney's Office, "Cross-industry communication is critical to understanding the rapidly changing world of technology and the risk some of these new mobile payment systems pose, as criminals will look to move the money through the systems that give them anonymity."
Overcoming certain privacy restrictions can result in a big-picture behavior-based view of what is "normal," thus increasing accuracy in detecting fraud and money laundering. Accurately detecting fraud and money laundering requires knowing whether an activity or event has met a certain business rule and whether that trigger is meaningful. True detection relies on understanding behavior in broader context to alert organizations to potential fraud, while notifying marketing and lending groups of the credit risk exposure.
Customers see their bank as a single brand that operates across multiple channels (ATMs, branch offices, online, call centers, mobile, etc.). Banks, likewise, see customers as diverse entities segmented by product (mortgage, credit card, consumer banking, small business, home equity, etc.). Criminals know this all too well. They often take advantage of bank fraud systems that rarely monitor customer behavior across multiple accounts, channels and systems to hide fraud and money-laundering activities in cross-channel transactions.
Institutions that are serious about combating financial crimes are adding entity link analysis or social network analysis to their arsenals. Network analysis helps investigators detect and prevent criminal activity by identifying patterns of behavior that only appear as suspicious when viewed across related accounts or entities.
Consortiums such as
A centralized, shared platform can automate and streamline the alerts through either batch or real-time monitoring. A centralized case management platform makes it easier to coordinate and collaborate on alerts, cases and investigations, as well as share leads, information and best practices between the fraud and anti-money-laundering teams.
There are multiple innovative technologies that are rocking the boat with many privacy advocates – Facebook, Google Wallet and
Ellen Joyner-Roberson is the principal global marketing manager for SAS Security Intelligence, a unit of