Cyber-attacks and social engineering, which have been on the rise since the Covid-19 pandemic, are among the biggest security challenges facing the payments industry, an official of Visa has emphasised.
“Cybersecurity is a massive area where evolution needs to happen,” Akshay Chopra, vice-president, head of innovation and design, CEMEA at Visa, told Gulf Times in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the recently held ‘Visa CEMEA Security Summit’ in Dubai.
Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) has gone through unparalleled digitisation that has completely transformed the world of commerce, payments, and money movement. The rapid adoption of new payment technologies, such as contactless and e-commerce has changed spending both online and offline.
It has also coincided with a rise in fraud and cybercriminal activity. These challenges have spurred players across the entire payment ecosystem to focus on resilience and security, invest in cutting-edge technologies, and strengthen collaboration with trusted partners.
Chopra explained, “Historically, ‘bad actors’ (cybercriminals, fraudsters, etc) would target transactions, but with the implementation of standards, such as 3D Secure and Visa Secure, fraud has decreased.”
However, Chopra noted that cybercriminals are now focusing on attacking organisations and using social engineering to gain access to sensitive information. He emphasised that “innovation is necessary to stay ahead of these challenges.”
“Both of these things have always been around. But in light of the increased transaction security, a lot of the bad actors have started putting more energy into that area and so, we have to innovate twice as hard to always stay a few steps ahead,” he stressed.
Speaking at the ‘Visa CEMEA Security Summit’, Charles Lobo, regional risk officer for CEMEA at Visa, stated that Visa has invested over $10bn in the last five years on cutting-edge cybersecurity to combat increasingly sophisticated criminals. This includes artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced data analytics to reduce fraud and prevent it before it even happens.
Similarly, Subra Kumaraswamy, Visa’s chief information security officer, addressed the security summit by discussing the accelerating action being taken on cybersecurity.
Sharing “staggering” figures, Kumaraswamy said the global economy lost $7tn to cybercrime in 2022, which equates to $19.2bn per day or $200,000 per second. With this much economic activity and opportunity at stake, Kumaraswamy highlighted the need for greater security awareness and constant vigilance.
During the summit’s fireside chat, Paul Fabara, Visa’s chief risk officer, expounded on the alarming trend of social engineering, a popular tactic that cybercriminals use to extract confidential information from consumers, jeopardising their security.
Fabara said social engineering can come in various forms like phishing, pretexting, baiting, and tailgating, and can be used to access personal information, financial data, or even corporate secrets.
Aside from Visa’s investments in security and anti-fraud infrastructure, Chopra said Visa is initiating new technologies like tokenisation, as well as collaborating with central and commercial banks to empower individuals to manage their own risk and protect their data and transactions, as well as to identify fraud easily.
Andrew Torre, regional president for CEMEA at Visa, told the security summit that contactless payments grew to 82% of all CEMEA transactions in 2022 and the security feature tokenization has reached approximately 25% of all Visa transactions in CEMEA.
“Taken together, the broader money movement flows, such as peer-to-peer, business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and government-to-consumer represent a $15tn opportunity in CEMEA,” Torre added.
Hector Rodriguez, head of transaction security solutions at Visa, concluded the two-day summit by discussing how the company is leveraging cutting-edge payment risk solutions to drive the future of secure and trusted digital money.
He highlighted how Visa Risk & Identity solutions work behind the scenes. For example, the AI/ML integrated platform builds, accelerates, automates, and simplifies data and AI product development and deployment.
“This has led to $27bn worth of annual fraud prevented. And Visa’s managed service of 24x7x365 proactive monitoring prevented $74mn in fraud for CEMEA issuers and acquirers,” Rodriguez added.