How Swipes, Taps, And More Can Protect Your IT Clients Against Online Fraudsters
By Jonathan Buckley, Senior VP of Marketing, at Qubole
Do you know that every two seconds someone’s identity is stolen? There are several ways to combat this such as getting creative and random with passwords and PIN numbers, refusing to provide personal information over the phone, shredding receipts and bank statements, and keeping a close eye on credit card statements. But as this modern age of technology improves exponentially, so do the security measures. Now you and your IT clients can protect your information with more than clever passwords and secret questions. Iris scans, facial recognition, and fingerprint scanners are rapidly shifting from science fiction to reality. Your identity can even be authenticated by your heartbeat, retinas, voice patterns, hand measurements, and, if you so choose, by the way you interact with the Internet.
Just like your fingerprints, the way you swipe and tap your finger or stylus across your tablet is unique. When studied and profiled by BioCatch and other authentication companies, the ways in which you manipulate the cursor on your laptop screen with your mouse or touchpad can identify you just like the picture on your driver’s license. Using special Big Data analysis tools like Apache Spark makes all of this possible. When the Internet can recognize who you are by your swipes and taps, by default that means that it can also recognize when your username, your laptop, your IP address, etc. is being used by someone other than you. Even if a cybercriminal manages to hijack your username, your password, or even the thumb print Touch ID on your iPhone, he will still not be able to pose as you online.
How Cyber Thieves Behave
While you are being profiled, so are the fraudsters. Natia Golan, who is the product manager at BioCatch, provider of cognitive biometric, authentication and malware detection solutions for mobile and Web applications, had this to say about how the company is foiling cyber thieves: “We’re profiling the fraudulent population. We’re able to say if a behavior is criminal behavior or not, because fraudsters behave differently than genuine users. For example, cybercriminals may enter credit card information slower than a genuine user would but display expert behaviors, such as using uncommon keyboard shortcuts.”
BioCatch has over 500 techniques that can create a “unique personal cognitive signature that cannot be imitated, lost or stolen” in just ten minutes. Here are several “expert behaviors” that cyber thieves use more often than the average population:
- Cybercriminals can apply for credit cards and open bank accounts with well-practiced speed.
- They always skip the optional fields when filling out a form.
- They know keyboard shortcuts that make every process go quicker.
- They target people who are going through major life events such as moving, starting a new job, a marriage, or a new baby in the family.
- Rarely does someone filling out an application of some sort have every document and know ever jargon word. Criminals do, so they never pause in the process to look something up.
These same cyber defense techniques are being used to identify malware. Whereas every human being has a behavioral signature that is different from everyone else’s, malware is the opposite. It is precise and it is mathematical.
The way that cybercriminals tap and swipe, and the speed at which they do everything they do is, ironically, their Achilles heel — an Achilles heel that will help law enforcement officials all over the world prevent identity theft and other online crimes. These new security measures will protect you and your clients online and off.