1888 PressRelease – Jonathan Young of Belmont Financial Group speaks on the future of fraud and how it could impact people and industries.
Over the past 10 years the nature of fraud has become more sophisticated and systematized. Gone are the days of the lone-wolf hacker seeing what they could get away with. Today, those days seem almost simple.
The days of those early fraudsters has faded. New forces are at work to perpetrate fraud on an industrial scale. Brute force attacks, social engineering, sophisticated malware – all these tools, and so many more – are being applied every day to cracking various security systems. The criminal underworld is awash in credentials, which are being used to create accounts, take over accounts and commit fraudulent transactions.
The impact is massive. Every year, billions of dollars are lost due to cyber-crime. Aside from the direct monetary losses, customers lose faith in brands and businesses, resources need to be allocated to reviewing suspect transactions and creativity and energy are squandered trying to chase down new risks and threats.
If the earliest days of fraud saw impacts on individuals, and fraud today is impacting enterprises, the future of fraud is far more sinister. Rather than just hurting businesses or their customers, we’re on the brink (if we haven’t crossed it already) of fraud being used to destabilize economies.
Think about it: in less than a decade we have gone from fraud being an isolated irritant (not that it wasn’t a problem) to being viewed as a potential, if clandestine, weapon. The stakes are no longer the funds in an account or even the wellbeing of a business. Today – and certainly tomorrow – the stakes will be higher. Fraudsters, terrorists really, will look for ways to nudge economies toward the abyss.
Sadly, the ability of fraudsters to infiltrate legitimate accounts and networks will never be fully stifled. The options available to them are just too broad for every hole to be plugged. What we can do is recognize when they’ve made it through our defences and prevent them from taking action. It’s the same approach we’ve always had: they may get in while we do everything possible to prevent them from doing harm.
In an ideal world bad guys would never get through in the first place but we don’t live in an ideal world. In the real world they’re going to get in. Knowing this isn’t easy. It isn’t comforting or comfortable. But in the real world there are real actions we can take to protect the things that matter – your money, your data and your sense of security.
We learned how to fight fraud in the past, we are fighting it with new technologies today and we will continue to apply insights and new approaches to protect our future.
Belmont Financial Group is an independent asset and wealth management firm based in Hong Kong and Tokyo who offer sound impartial financial advice to their global client base. For any further information please visit http://www.belmontfinancialgroup.com or email info ( @ ) belmontfinancialgroup dot com.