How Can We Improve Fighting Financial Crime With Artificial Intelligence?

Guest Post | Jan 4, 2023

Image: Pixabay/GDJ

Identifying Key Areas of Financial Crime

To fight digital financial crime, you’ve got to know what you’re up against. You’ve got to identify risk and fortify. Prime vulnerabilities for digital theft need to be protected. The difficulty is, financial criminals are successful enough they’re able to run an entire industry. The “black hat”, “cybercriminal” industry generates comparable economy to “white hat” tech, worldwide.

There are a number of reasons for this, chief among them tech companies that base their entire revenue generation model around digital theft, scams, and similar activities. We’re all familiar with the trope of a scammer based in Mumbai, or a similar city, using the lack of information certain people have to trick them into giving up their assets.

There are tax scams and those which deceive targets into believing they’ve been paid money they shouldn’t have. Quite a variety of tactics exist. What’s relevant to business clients is that cybercriminal financial crime often targets small and large operations in similar ways. Phishing scams are a fine example. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can act as a digital shield.

For example, adaptive contextual technology through NICE Actimize can be a key resource in preventing financial crime, such as money laundering. We’ll explore more ways AI helps prevent financial crime here.

AI Can Identify Cybercriminal Patterns

Because many cybercriminal exploits function much like white hat technology through a traditional Managed Service Provider, or MSP, there is a high degree of automation going on. Scammers will set up programs and protocols designed to automatically seek out vulnerabilities in targets. Basically, they use their own form of AI.

As the old saying goes, it takes one to know one. Because cybercriminal revenue generation commonly utilizes automation which necessarily involves AI and Machine Learning (ML), using the superior, but similar, digital tactics is a fine way of anticipating their maneuvers and protecting your business against them.

AI and ML Applications Can Help You Know Where to Fortify
Where things get difficult is in terms of social engineering hacks, which in modern times often combine AI and ML cybercrime techniques with old school “con” jobs. Are you familiar with that classic film The Sting, or the newer caper drama Now You See Me, where magicians steal? Well, modern cybercrime incorporates such tactics as well as those related to tech.

A great example of a social engineering hack is a phishing scam wherein an email that is designed to appear as though it came from a “higher up” in the company is sent to those in the financial areas of an organization. The email will demand funds, information, access, or something else, and it will demand that information immediately.

Staff needs to be trained on how to avoid and anticipate such scams, but AI can look for features which could flag certain messages ahead of time. There are “digital sandboxes” where files sent via attachment through email can be accessed without compromising the whole network of your business. They can be “detonated”, as it were, safely.

See:  Zurich CEO: Cyber Attacks May Become ‘Uninsurable’

Spelling, actual email addresses, the time emails are sent, and the like can be flagged, either preventing emails from being sent to an email server or notifying recipients that there is suspicious activity afoot. So you can use AI as leverage against social engineering hacks by identifying common features of such attacks and fortifying operations against them.

Image: Pixabay/TheDigitalArtist

More Protection Against Increasing Cybercriminal Threats

In a nutshell, proper AI and ML help you identify patterns, anticipate cybercriminal attacks, and fortify your business against financial crime overall. This is a brief overview, there are textbooks on this subject. In a nutshell, if you haven’t looked into AI security against cybercrime, this is a wise move.

The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org

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