Due to the current outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the world is already in the middle of economic disruption. Cybercrime and fraud is an added hassle that adds fuel to fire. Businesses can no longer afford to face any more losses these days. Unfortunately, criminals have taken advantage of the current situation and fraudulent activities have become more common than before. Since businesses have moved online to execute their operations, cybercrime has taken a new turn. In the struggle to maintain social distancing protocols and remote working operations, organizations fail to defend against sophisticated fraudsters from stealing important information for their illegal endeavors.
52% of the compliance experts have confirmed that the major threat to their organization is due to cybersecurity. Cyberattack has increased by 800 percent in 2020.
In these serious times, it is important to have an ultimate verification solution that can eliminate fraudulent activities and secure these businesses. In this blog, we will discuss the types of cyberattacks and how identity verification solutions can help eliminate these crimes.
Types of Cybercrimes
Malware
Malware is a way of getting into your computer and creating havoc. It can steal personal information, monitor your activities, and take over the system. Attackers deploy many ways and means to get malware into your system. The most common method is to trick the user into downloading a link and getting into the system.
Phishing attack
Another method used by cybercriminals to steal important information is a phishing attack. It is a fake email that looks like an official email and manipulates the user into giving out important passwords or sensitive information to steal data. This email also leads you to install malware into your system. Verifying the email sender must be a necessity to fight the phishing attack.
Ransomware
Ransomware uses hacking mechanisms and malware to steal user identity so that the victim could be blackmailed to pay the ransom. Once that is done, the cyber attacker steals all the important information from the system. Then they use that breached data to blackmail the organization. If organizations don’t pay them a certain amount, then potential fraudsters will release the personal data of the company.
Here are some statistics about cyberattacks.
- Malware attack done through email is 94%
- Insiders were responsible for 34% of the data breaches
- Social attacks are 22% of the data breach
- Malware includes 17% of the data breach
- Authorized users were responsible for misuses and resulted in 8% of the data breaches
Impacts of Cyberattack
The Healthcare sector, in the middle of a war against COVID-19, has been affected badly by cyberattackers. Fraudsters steal the medical information of the patient and use their insurance to avail of services without paying any sum. According to IBM’s report, the healthcare sector faced a cyberattack security breach worth $7.13 million.
8,000 small business owners have been impacted by a data breach in federal loan applications. A network of ransomware attackers has hijacked aid organizations, medical companies, transport companies, educational software, institutes owned by governments in 2020. 47% of the employees faced phishing attacks in remote working. The total loss from data breaches due to remote working is worth $137,000. There has been an increase in scams by 400% during the COVID-19 pandemic. 18 million malware and phishing emails are blocked by Google daily during the global lockdown.
Today, there has been a significant rise in identity theft cases. People’s credit card information is being misused by fraudsters, and businesses are the ones facing the brunt of the situation, which has also led to an increase in chargeback fraud.
Identity Verification Solutions
In order to eradicate digital crimes, an identity verification solution should be applied. There are artificially intelligent solutions available now that can authenticate users regardless of their location. These identity verification solutions are a highly effective method that can verify a person’s identity within seconds. Businesses no longer have to face frequent cyberattacks and can carry on with their operations seamlessly.
Following are a few applications of identity verification that can be used to verify a person’s identity:
Face Verification
This solution uses facial recognition technology to verify the person’s face and fight spoofing attacks. Face verification procedure requires the person to capture a selfie or record video evidence. The faceprint from the image is matched with a picture of the identity card provided before. This AI-powered solution can even detect if someone is using a fake picture or a face mask, which is a highly effective method to ensure the identity of the person and be secure from the attack.
Document Verification
Document verification can verify a person’s identity through their government-issued identity documents. The AI-based solution can verify the authenticity of documents to ensure that they are not tampered with or compromised. The verifying user has to submit a picture of their identity document which is matched and screened against the submitted document. The government-issued documents could be an identity card, passports, or even a driver’s license. Fraudsters will not get verified and this is a great way to authenticate the official-looking malware emails.
Two-Factor Authentication
This is a great security measure that verifies a person by sending them a code on their phone number or an email id. Fraudsters or identity thieves would not be able to access the code and they would not be able to use the stolen information.
These Identity verification solutions have been a great help in these tough times. Many businesses have benefited from this to fight fraudsters and criminals.
