Emerging technologies centred on the misuse of corporate and personal data continue to pose threats to individuals, institutions and government assets.
So said Chris McAuley, director of fraud and financial crime for SAS' Advanced Analytics Business Unit.
Addressing delegates on changing trends and technologies in the fight against fraud at SAS' analytics and data conference yesterday, McAuley gave insight into how new software and applications are aiding financial crimes committed on the Internet.
"Cyber thieves are able to evade tax, steal identities, and commit healthcare and procurement fraud - where employees in the government and financial sectors pay money into their own or 'ghost' accounts," he said.
An example is software called Torpig, explains McAuley, which is designed to turn off anti-virus applications, modify data on the computer, steal information and drop more malware.
"Once the virus is in the system, cyber thieves are then able to access users' personal data, which include online banking details, usernames and passwords, credit card details, and users' locations and identities. The data is then sold to underground Web sites similar to the now defunct 'Carderplanet' and 'DarkMarket'."
He adds that these sites work on a model that allows buyers and sellers of stolen identities and credit card data to meet and set up criminal enterprises in an entrepreneurial, peer-reviewed environment.
Another example he used was of Standard Chartered Bank, the US subsidiary of Standard Chartered, conspiring with its Iranian clients to illegally transfer almost 60 000 secret transactions through its New York branch using a method known as 'wire stripping', which entails hiding important details about a client, including nationality, from transaction history.
"This resulted in the US government drawing up tax law legislation for its citizens living abroad."
Despite these challenges, McAuley notes, there are solutions becoming available to the market, such as NICE Actimize, ACI Worldwide and the SAS AML, which offer wide-ranging solutions for cyber crime protection.
McAuley concluded that traditional detection and prevention measures are now being re-examined in light of the emergence of these new threats, and that data analytics is central to the next-generation methods of detecting and preventing financial crimes.
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