Although various types of fraud are a common risk businesses need to protect themselves against, according to Forbes, the leading fraud risk to companies is identity theft.
In today’s age of online identities and now, as a result of COVID-19 – social distancing, it has become even harder to authenticate the identity of individuals and mitigate fiscal losses which, according to the Financial Cost of Fraud report, is costing individuals and businesses across the world a massive $5,127-trillion each year.
“Enterprises across the board need to take their online security more seriously and to the next level,” says Gur Geva, co-CEO of iiDENTIFii. “Businesses are becoming complacent with their level of security, yet the numbers highlighted in the fraud report show that this is an area that needs to be prioritised. Urgently.”
Given that most businesses and their clients have poor online security, this weakens a company’s ability to deal with the complexities of fraud and identity theft.
Geva says: “Most sectors are vulnerable to identity fraud and have no facial recognition software system in place. This is particularly important for the financial services sector which is at massive risk on a daily basis. Banks are becoming devastatingly exposed to payment schemes due to an inability to effectively verify identities online. That is why it is imperative to know your customer.
“Businesses need to distinguish exactly who they are dealing with at any given time within a matter of seconds. This increases their level of security and strengthens their defence against payment – and other kinds of B2B fraud, whilst leaving the control of online identity in the hands of the user,” says Geva.