Provenir, a global leader in AI-powered risk decisioning software, recently brought together more than 50 representatives from the public and private spheres at an event in Paris (‘Fraude Financiere en France – evolutions, impacts et solutions’) to help drive greater collaboration between the public and private sectors when it comes to fighting increasingly sophisticated fraud. 

The attendees considered the importance of sharing best practice, new data sources, and investigation techniques. The discussions emphasised that fraud isn’t a competitive issue – it’s something that everyone needs to fight together. 

The speakers included two senior representatives from the French government, Emmanuel Dusch and Guillaume David from the Service d’enquête judiciaire français, who explained that when they shared information with the public sector, they had more breakthroughs and the levels of fraud dropped.

The event highlighted how the challenges, techniques, and operating methods of fraud are the same regardless of the sector that the fraudsters are attacking and how new technologies are opening new vulnerabilities but also bringing new solutions to market.  

Four main trends were identified:

• Scale – Given the digitalisation of so many processes in the public and private sectors, the number of transactions which need to be authenticated is enormous.  JPMorgan Chase recently reported that they experience  45 billion hacking attempts a day – with the number double what it was last year. It’s therefore vital to know what technology exists, and can be easily integrated into processes, to let through valid requests and block anything else without overwhelming investigators.
• Technology – Fraudsters are also making use of technology to bypass checks.  For example, it’s estimated the use of deep fakes increased ten times from 2022 to 2023 and can be used to pass liveness tests for stolen identities, or to create completely synthetic identities for money laundering purposes.  But on the positive side, being able to understand blockchain technologies enables laundered money to be tracked effectively and traced back to source.  And this type of technology improves day by day, making the challenges and the opportunities even bigger. This highlights the importance of harnessing technology in the fight against fraud; to gain as many data points as possible, rather than just a single angle, and using the technology to then make sense of the picture that emerges.
• Automation – The development of robotics and generative AI makes it more economical for fraudsters to commit many smaller frauds, which can more easily pass under limit radars than fewer larger ones.  Automation also works to prevent fraud, with AI technologies able to detect links and networks by checking previous applications, highlighting new hot data items (a common delivery address for example) which can then be used to identify other potentially suspect requests quickly and block new attacks.
• Specialisation – As in the private sector, where whole industries are growing to address certain niche challenges and outsource certain tasks, the same applies in the world of fraud, with, for example, experts in ransomware working to obtain new identities which can then be sold on to other fraudsters.  There is increasing collaboration between these different fraud specialities.  On the other hand, comprehensive discussions between the public and private sectors facilitate a similar level of collaboration in the active fight against fraud by sharing best practices, new data sources, and investigation techniques.

“It was very interesting to have the perspectives of both the public and private sector together in the same room,” said Brice Barouch, Country Manager, France at Provenir.

“It quickly became clear that fraud attempts are practically the same in both sectors, and fraud will just morph to where it thinks things are easiest. So, if governments start closing things down, they will come back to the private sector – and vice versa – but it’s the same tips and tricks they are using everywhere. They will switch between sectors as better controls are put in place in one area, finding another that gives a better return for the least amount of effort, whether that’s B2C, B2B, public, or private.”

“This underlines the importance of communication between all potential targets of fraud and sharing best practices because what works in one area will usually add value in another.”

The event in Paris also showcased five providers of anti-fraud solutions active in the French market, which each bring unique angles to the fraud challenge: Bleckwen, Inovatic, Meelo, Rollee, and Telesign.

“Having a breadth of complementary data sources and indicators is crucial in the fight against fraud,” added Berg. “It helps to reduce the number of false positives that can result from an overreliance on a narrow set of factors. One data element in itself isn’t enough to prove whether there is fraud or not – you have to look at the 360 view to see the full picture. Once all the necessary data has been obtained, Provenir can then host and execute policy rules or scoring models weighting the results from each data provider to give an overall picture of the risk represented, which helps organizations immediately detect fraud.”