It seems that identity theft is rampant in the business world, with it being one of the top attack types in the past 12 months.
A new report Persona surveying 500 professionals across numerous industries, including finance, healthcare and e-commerce found identity fraud was acknowledged as one of the most challenging problems to solve.
80% of respondents said that identity fraud is a priority for their organization, with 49% of those claiming it to be a top priority.
Dealing with ID fraud
Heidi Landenberger, Lead fraud investigator at Udemy, commented, “identity fraud is a critical building block for many other types of fraud. Tackling the identity fraud component can weaken or entirely prevent other kinds of fraud attacks.”
Identity theft was the most challenging type of fraud to address according to the respondents, with 39% affirming this. Combating fake or forged documents came in second (34%), while payment fraud was third (32%).
Phishing is also a popular attack vector targeting firms, with almost a third (27%) of respondents claiming to have suffered such incidents in the past 12 months. Data theft was the second most common (26%), and fraud involving fake or stolen ID was third (25%).
Persona believes that the rise of generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) has boosted phishing attacks. It also claims that technology cannot prevent phishing altogether - instead, organizations should "ensure your team is vigilant and has a process in place for identifying activity typical of social engineering and phishing as quickly as possible."
However, the survey also found that many are confident in their defensive capabilities, with 80% of respondents believing that their firm can address fraud attacks effectively.
Their strategies involve: "consultation with internal and external experts, alerting the authorities, adding friction, communicating with users, and offering additional employee training as common strategies to address fraud attacks."
However, 64% feel that the technology they have does not help them to proactively tackle fraud. Landenberger believes that AI and Machine Learning can help in this regard:
“One key way to stay proactive is to utilize machine learning technology. This allows you to readily adapt your fraud prevention as fraudsters continually evolve their methodologies."
