Aite Group, an independent research and advisory firm focused on business, technology, and regulatory issues, interviewed 25 executives at 18 of the top 40 largest U.S. financial institutions based on asset size in order to provide an evaluation of the current state of fraud. New research proves that contact centers are being attacked more than ever before. Aite’s Senior Analyst, Shirley Inscoe, joined Pindrop’s Director of Research, Dr. David Dewey, to discuss the growing threat of fraud in the contact center during this session.
With the rollout of EMV chip cards, fraudsters have redirected their attacks to the contact center for data mining and account takeover. Sixty-one percent of fraud can be traced back to the contact center, but it doesn’t end there – fraud is a cross-channel problem. Many enterprises fail to identify the contact center as the root cause of fraud loss, enabling fraud in others channels, such as debit card, credit card, and check order takeover. Meanwhile, fraudsters are capitalizing on this misdiagnosis and targeting the contact center as the weakest link in security.
Contact center fraud loss is expected to double from $393M to $775M by 2020. As chip cards continue to gain momentum in the United States, organized fraud rings will continue targeting the phone channel, replacing traditional counterfeit card fraud. Current authentication factors in the contact center often fail due to the data fraudsters acquire through social engineering tactics in order to reset account credentials. Armed with data, organized fraud rings probe agents at enterprises for the information they need to access customer funds, and the point of least resistance is often the contact center.
Organized fraud rings are using automated attacks, specifically robotic fraudsters, targeting interactive voice recordings (IVRs), to keep their cost down while still managing to dramatically increase market coverage. Despite the intent to administer positive and timely customer experiences, contact centers agents often fall victim to the social engineering methods that enable fraud attacks. Fraud attacks increase operational costs, decrease customer satisfaction, and jeopardize brand reputation as customer data is repeatedly lost to fraud. Contact centers will continue to enable cross-channel fraud until technology solutions are implemented to thwart it.
Catch the on-demand session of September’s webinar now.
