South African banks continue to battle social engineering, with more than half of the respondents of a recent industry survey sayingAPP fraud is a type of fraud where victims are participants, manipulated or otherwise convinced to make real-time payments to fraudsters.
According to a survey of 29 banking fraud professionals from nine of South Africa’s top banks, the types of fraud that are causing the most concern are APP fraud and Vishing , Phishing/SMS-ing , and SIM swap fraud . “Banks are realising that they have to collaborate and look across different transaction types and banks to detect and prevent these new fraud vectors,” said Gerhard Oosthuizen, Entersekt’s CTO.
“Until recently, banks have never had to deal with anything like this. As governments around the world take a restorative justice approach to banks with APP fraud, banking leaders are now forced to find ways to protect their account holders from making voluntary but ill-conceived payments from their own accounts.”mandated to reimburse customers who are victims of APP fraud
must keep track of all forms of money movement, including card transactions and push payment transactionsAttackers will get the victim to deposit money into a mule account. Their next challenge is then to ‘cash out’, by moving the money to another account where they can take it out, or making a purchase using a card or withdrawing the funds.
“Once we see something is strange, we can then determine how to respond. Can the transaction be delayed? Should we as the bank warn the client? And should we as the bank prevent the transaction?”