Executive Level Cyber Threat Intelligence: Leveraging CTI to Predict and Prevent Fraud

Cybercrime losses have been estimated to exceed U.S. $10 trillion, in large part because of successful socially engineered attacks that spread ransomware and facilitate account takeovers and business disruption. Fraud continues to escalate because banks and retailers fail to connect cyber-attacks to money-laundering networks and socially engineered attacks. C-suite executives must change their antiquated views that siloed organizational structures ensure accountability. Today’s fast-paced digital world proves just the opposite, where silos and check-box compliance have opened doors for cybercriminals to exploit bureaucratic weaknesses. Weak consumer authentication practices and piecemealed enterprise-level identity and access management systems are easily circumvented by synthetic identities. And manual anti-money-laundering practices prevent fraud teams from connecting financial fraud losses to suspicious activity reports, while cybersecurity teams are hamstrung from communicating to AML teams indicators that suggest money-mule recruitment and infiltration. In the end, organizations have failed to use existing cyber tools to detect and stop fraudulent and suspicious activity. Organizations prevent themselves from using readily available cyber threat intelligence to predict fraud before it occurs. 

Fraud-prevention and cybersecurity budgetary decisions are today made at the CEO level, where visibility is too high and nuances around cyber and fraud risks are not clear. The c-suite must empower cyber and fraud teams by realigning governance and oversight in a way that supports emerging cyber-fraud integration (fusion).

Foreword 

This Javelin Strategy & Research report, sponsored by Mastercard, details the cybersecurity and fraud integration challenges organizations face because of antiquated practices, duplicated technology, and outdated corporate culture, leaving them at increased vulnerability to cyber-attack, cyber intrusion, and fraud. Successful cyber-fraud integration or “fusion” has been delayed because AML, fraud, and cybersecurity teams are separately funded, leaving fraud managers and specialists not just at odds with their cyber and AML colleagues, but often in competition.