Cyber Security Ransomware Encrypted Email Phishing Technology Protected Digital Information Secured
With the advent of AI and deepfakes, how will we keep digital transactions safe? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Reply by Pat Kinsel, Founder/CEO of Proof.com and former venture capitalist, on Quora:
Fraud has been plaguing public companies and investors, and regular consumers, long before deepfakes took off – the average firm spends $5.2 million a year on account lockouts and password resets ALONE! So before deepfakes, we were already losing the battle. With rapid advances in AI and deepfake generating capabilities, traditional methods of identity verification are becoming increasingly obsolete in securing digital transactions. It is trivial to build a fake identity, generate a fake video or falsify income statements, bank details, you name it.
To truly restore trust and defend against the growing threat of AI-powered impersonation, institutions will need to adopt a much more comprehensive and dynamic approach. Instead of relying solely on those static identity profiles we create when someone first opens an account, we need to shift our focus to continuous verification across all customer touchpoints. This means reducing our overreliance on easily compromised information, such as passwords and social security numbers, which can be obtained and misused by fraudsters with relative ease.
Instead, institutions must begin implementing a new playbook for more sophisticated identity protection tactics that go beyond surface-level checks. This includes things like in-depth credential analysis to validate documents, verifying information against authoritative sources, and performing liveness checks to make sure we’re dealing with a real, live person. And by using those technologies that provide deeper insights into a transaction, such as device location and phone number history, they can do a much better job of distinguishing legitimate customers from impersonators.
At the same time, it is essential that official documents and digital data are issued, modified and shared only by verified sources, with encrypted metadata to prove their legitimacy and create an auditable trail. Just imagine – when you get that credit card bill, you need to be able to confirm that it came directly from the issuer. And when the bank receives a withdrawal authorization, they must be able to verify that it really came from their customer. Creating a secure identity authorization network would give individuals and businesses a secure way to use verified identity to authorize transactions, deals, content creation and other digital actions, in a way that we we can trust them and execute them immediately.
However, relying on technology alone will not be enough. When those automated systems can’t provide enough confidence in a customer’s identity or when a transaction raises red flags, there should be human reviewers available 24/7 to step in and verify what’s going on. This human oversight, combined with all those advanced verification techniques, is truly key to helping institutions maintain trust and security in this age of rapidly evolving fraud tactics.
Ultimately, combating the AI-powered counterfeiting threat will require a dynamic and multifaceted approach. By constantly adapting their identity verification strategies, institutions can stay one step ahead and do a much better job of protecting digital transactions, while maintaining the integrity of our trust systems in the process.
This question originally appeared on Quora – the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
