Combating Synthetic Identity Fraud: Key Takeaways from the OWI Panel

Hacking, money mules, identity theft and synthetic fraud are some of the many vectors of attack being used globally to target and exploit banks and fintechs for money laundering purposes. There is no silver bullet to end fraud schemes (or fraudsters in general for that matter). As with any technology, this is a constantly evolving space that needs to target both preventive solutions and the fraudsters looking to circumvent them.

At the recent KNOW Identity Digital Forum, Acuant’s CPO Jose Caldera joined the panel “Ghost in the Machine: Combating Synthetic Identity Fraud” with our partners Chuck Christofilis of CoinZoom and Lauren Day of Binance.US to discuss current fraud trends, eCBSV (Electronic Consent Based Social Security Number Verification) pain points, preventative tools against fraudsters and predictions for Q4 of 2020.

“Everything with risk and security is about raising the bar – it’s about having a component that can both measure a point in time and measure the level of associated risk.”

– Jose Caldera, Acuant

Key Takeaways from the Panel:

With an increase in online growth, fraudsters continue to work their way around controls and security measures.

1. Synthetic fraud has continued and will continue to grow
2. Fraudulent identity behaviors on the rise: general identity theft, loan applications and elder financial abuse or financial exploitation
3. There is a massive uptick in phishing and scams that trick people into revealing personal identifying information

Though a positive step in the right direction, the US’s eCBSV program from the SSA (The Social Security Administration) will not, by itself, solve the synthetic fraud issue and comes with a number of pain points.

1. Components of the solution may not be available for every application of identity fraud
2. Practitioners may be put off by having to receive consent from the end user in order to access the data
3. Other countries with similar solutions have run into issues verifying the 1:1 or 1:N relationship between the data and the “person” on the other end of the transaction

Technology can be the barrier to stop fraudsters.

1. Liveness Matching is becoming a key component in identifying and fighting synthetic fraud- over the past 12-18 months, the technology has become more accurate and reliable
2. Pairing document authentication with strong liveness and biometric matching helps thwart some of these fraudulent issues
3. Combining different data points such as liveness matching with additional biometrics and IP login and device history is successful in detecting fraud

Looking to the future, they expect to see further rise in synthetic fraud for loan application and money collection over the next 6-12 months. But there will be solutions to combat this.

1. More collaboration and data sharing between companies
2. More utilization of technologically that raises the bar to increase effectiveness of solutions
3. Continuous evolutions of technology, especially when it comes to accuracy and biometrics

To learn more watch the full webinar with Acuant’s Jose Caldera, CoinZoom’s Chuck Christofilis and Binance.US’s Lauren Day.