27-10final

Fraud
Above graph: the ID
fraud cases by age of
victim, showing the
middle age are most
represented; below, the
cases by type of financial
product
Figures courtesy of Cifas
38
cifas on ‘epidemic’:
Identity Identity cases
cases rise
rise
Mentoring evening
Sharon Barber, Director
of IT Cyber Security and
Risk at Lloyds Banking
Group, and Mark Ward,
CISO at Vanquis Bank,
were among guests
at the Fraud Women’s
Network mentoring
dinner in London on
September 21. Visit www.
fraudwomensnetwork.
com.
UNHAPPY
‘While cyber security has
cemented itself onto the
board’s agenda, they
often lack the training
to deal with incidents.’
At audit firm KPMG,
Paul Taylor, UK head of
Cyber Security.
Identity fraud has
continued to rise at record
levels in the first six
months of 2017, according
to the counter-fraud trade
body Cifas. A record 89,000
identity frauds were recorded,
up 5pc from last year. Most,
83pc of identity frauds were
done online. Cifas points
to a sharp rise in identity fraudsters
applying for loans, online retail,
telecoms and (sharpest rise of all)
insurance products. Although the
number of ID fraud attempts against
bank accounts and plastic cards has
fallen these still account for more than
half of all such cases. Plastic cards are
the largest single financial product to
feature in ID fraud cases; next come
bank accounts, although those two
categories each saw falls in numbers
compared with the year before.
Who are the victims?
Few are under 21, but that arguably
is because they haven’t much online
‘UK is not
keeping pace’
Identity verification in the UK is not
keeping pace with digital innovation.
E-commerce has made it more of
a necessity to prove your identity
online. Yet the UK lacks a ‘one stop
shop’ for proving ID, says a report
from a think-tank. Identification
processes remain ‘largely stuck in
the paper world’, says Scott Corfe,
chief economist at the Social Market
Foundation, author of A Verifiable
Success.
Baltic example
Estonia’s ‘e-ID’ enables digital
signatures, internet voting and public
service access, and the United Arab
Emirates now has a smartphone
‘passport app’. The UK Government
is risking losing out on a growing
OCTOBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY
financial footprint to be hacked or
exploited. The largest single cohort
of victims of impersonation is people
in their 30s, closely followed by
those in their 40s. The number of
victims of impersonation aged over
60 actually fell, the only group by age
to see a fall; although not all victims
of impersonation are recorded with a
valid UK address or date of birth, so
not all cases can be given a regional or
age breakdown. As Cifas says, most
ID fraud happens when a fraudster
pretends to be an innocent individual
to buy a product or take out a loan in
their name. Often victims do not even
realise they have been the target, until
a bill arrives for something they did
not buy, or they find problems with
export opportunity, Crife warns.
The UK is making it easier to verify
identity online with the gov.uk
Verify service, as launched in 2016,
that for example lets you file your
self-assessment tax return. There
is a compelling case for the UK to
build on the progress already made,
rather than look back to the old
British blue passport, he argues. The
report notes the 2017 Conservative
Party manifesto acknowledged the
case for greater use of Verify; but
‘since winning the general election
in June, the Government has yet to
provide further details’. He suggests
that UK Government should look
towards providing an endorsement for
companies which offer robust identity
checks. “For example, social media
and money transfer platforms could
use the kitemark to show that they vet
users in a robust way, to check they
are who they say they are.” You can
read the 46-page report at the thinktank’s
website: www.swf.co.uk. p
their credit rating. To
carry out this kind of
fraud, fraudsters need
access to their victim’s
personal details such
as name, date of birth,
address, their bank and
who they hold accounts
with. Fraudsters get
hold of this in a variety
of ways, whether
stealing physical mail,
or hacking; obtaining
data on the ‘dark web’;
exploiting social media,
or though ‘social engineering’ where
innocent parties are persuaded to
give up personal details to someone
pretending to be from their bank,
the police or a retailer. Cifas Chief
Executive Simon Dukes said:
“Criminals are relentlessly targeting
consumers and businesses and we
must all be alert to the threat and do
more to protect personal information.
For smaller and medium-sized
businesses in particular, they must
focus on educating staff on good
cyber security behaviours and raise
awareness of the social engineering
techniques employed by fraudsters.
Relying solely on new fraud
prevention technology is not enough.”
p
Safer jobs
tops million
A scheme to
combat job fraud
has given free
advice to over one
million job seekers.
SAFER Jobs was
set up by the Met
Police’s Fraud and
Linked Crime
Online (FALCON) unit in 2008, in an
effort to combat bogus employers
defrauding people by pretending to
offer paid work. SAFER Jobs has
become a registered charity working
with the private and public sector.
Keith Rosser, pictured, Chair of
SAFER Jobs, said: “Recruitment fraud
takes many guises including paying
for background checks, identity theft,
premium rate phone interview scams,
and even human trafficking and
modern slavery. The public can fall
for fake jobs advertised online or they
can even be ‘head-hunted’.” p
www.professionalsecurity.co.uk