Another attack, called a business email compromise (BEC), occurs when a hacker impersonates a known executive. A new algorithm aims to cut down on BECs by analyzing more than 7,000 writing characteristics and comparing them against an AI model trained with a person’s real style.
If the algorithm notices discrepancies, it sends a warning to the implied sender as well as a company’s IT department. Most BEC attacks reportedly come from an individual who impersonates the CEO or a company’s managing director. The fraudulent emails then often contain urgent requests, such as to perform wire transfers.
Some lottery scammers operate in similar ways. Tips for avoiding them warn people to beware of getting asked to provide their bank details to set up a wire transfer. Instead of transferring a person’s “winnings” to the account, scammers take all the money out.
4. To Detect Credit Card Fraud
Statistics about global cybercrime estimate that it costs the world’s economy approximately $600 billion. And, one of the most common but preventable kinds of cybercrime is credit card fraud, especially as people are increasingly eager to buy things online.
Companies have developed AI tools that spot unusual transactions with algorithms that understand the typical types of purchases for certain customers and compare them to other “clusters” of people making similar ones.
Like the AI product mentioned above that highlights suspicious network traffic, these fraud-detection tools learn what’s out of the ordinary and raise the alarm when needed.
One thing that makes this approach superior to the frameworks that flag anything falling outside a given set of parameters is that people get placed into new clusters based on the things they buy.
For example, if some of those transactions indicate they are taking a vacation soon, they’d get put in a group of other people planning vacations, and alerts would only arise if a person’s behavior deviates too much from others in the cluster.
Cybercriminals Will Likely Use AI, Too
These developments undoubtedly show promise for helping people avoid cybercrime, whether at the enterprise or individual level.
But, as AI gets smarter and more practical to use, it’s inevitable that those who orchestrate cybercrime will try it to achieve their means.
So, people depending on AI to stop attacks must ensure their algorithms stay as up to date as possible to stay ahead of the hackers and scammers.
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