Student loans, house payments and credit card transactions regularly occur online. It can be difficult to safeguard information in the digital age for consumers and businesses alike. How can businesses strengthen their already existing security features, especially when consumers share various aspects of their lives online through social media, blogs and more?
The vast amount of information on the Internet makes it difficult to protect. As an example, a social media user shops on e-commerce websites frequently. The majority of websites have security questions as a method to retrieve passwords. A fraudster has infiltrated one e-commerce account, but ultimately wants to get the victim’s bank account.
Passwords for the e-commerce website and the bank account are not the same. However, the fraudster is aware of what bank the victim uses through the e-commerce shopping account. In an attempt to gain access to the account, the fraudster goes to change a password and receives security questions to answer. The questions include ‘what is your favorite food‘ and ‘what is your favorite musical artist’? While these may appear as general questions, in reality the questions are simple to answer because of social media.
Unknowingly, the victim has included her favorite musician and food in her About Me section on Facebook, which matches her security questions to her bank account. In doing this, the fraudster has easy access to change the account password and to lock her out.
In a world with numerous places to gain information, EVS offers Dynamic Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA), which is crucial for banks and any type of institution that stores payment information. KBA removes the risk in processing online transactions, transferring funds, resetting passwords and more. This is accomplished by a KBA engine utilizes multiple data sources from public, private and credit databases to generate multiple-choice questions that only the account owner would know. Unlike general questions that may be found on bills, social media or through a quick Google search.
Although, the issue is significant in the banking world, the issue can affect any site that stores data and provides online transactions.
