More than Half of U.S. Banks Say Fraud Schemes Too Sophisticated and Evolve Too Quickly to Stop, Survey Reveals

October 19, 2017

OAKBROOK TERRACE, IL – October 19, 2017 – VASCO® Data Security International, Inc. (NASDAQ: VDSI), a global leader in digital solutions including identity, security and business productivity, today announced survey results on fraud prevention in the financial services sector. The 2017 Faces of Fraud Survey, conducted by ISMG, the world’s largest media organization devoted solely to information security and risk management, delivers revealing insights into the sector’s challenges in fraud practices and strategies, and underscores the growing vulnerability of mobile channels.

The 2017 Faces of Fraud Survey was commissioned by VASCO and compiled with responses from banking and security leaders representing financial institutions ranging from under $500 million to more than $20 billion in assets. Key findings include:

  • 52 percent say today’s fraud schemes are too sophisticated and evolve too quickly to keep pace;

  • Only 38 percent have high confidence in their organization’s ability to detect and prevent fraud;

  • Almost half identify technical barriers or controls not talking to one another as a top challenge to improving enterprise fraud;

  • 41 percent do not want to add new anti-fraud controls that might negatively impact the customer experience;

  • 35 percent say they are countering mobile exploits with multifactor authentication;

  • Just 13 percent believe they are identifying fraud in real time.

“The survey results echo what VASCO is seeing across the market – there are myriad anti-fraud solutions to choose from, their implementation and use is not easy, and integration between solutions and across channels is limited,” said VASCO’s Chief Executive Officer, Scott Clements. “In the past, balancing security with implementation and ease of use often came with trade-offs. New identity solutions that integrate multiple authentication technologies, such as those from VASCO, are changing this equation enabling trust in identities, transactions and devices with no degradation of the user experience.”

Analysts Julie Conroy from Aite Group and Avivah Litan from Gartner are quoted in the survey report reinforcing the value of anti-fraud controls including device binding, machine learning and behavioral analytics, as well as those that provide continuous authentication. These frictionless and transparent fraud controls were praised for being difficult to circumvent by fraudsters.