nsKnox Is Preparing for a Wave of ‘Human Hacking’

As cybercriminals become increasingly sophisticated, companies must implement technology to protect payments, Nithai Barzam, COO at nsKnox, writes in the new PYMNTS eBook, “2023 Payments New Year’s Resolutions.”

With the threat of recession in 2023 very much alive, alongside the challenges and vulnerabilities of working from home (WFH), the implementation of back-office automation and digitization of payments are advancing rapidly. While such efficiencies are essential for organizations, they also create new opportunities for fraudsters, both external and internal. Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their methods and techniques, targeting companies of all sizes in all verticals. In addition, economic downturns have historically increased insider fraud.

The implications of this significant surge in the volume of attempted and regretfully successful payment fraud attacks are billions of dollars lost (often irrecoverable) and reputational damage that takes years from which to recover.

So many talk about faster, real-time, immediate payments. This is great to be able to pay and receive money quickly, but it also opens the door for what’s known as “faster fraud” and closes the window of time to confirm compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing regulations.

With this in mind, my New Year’s Resolution is to provide corporations and banks with tools that better protect payments, eliminate manual processes and increase efficiency. In short — help finance professionals sleep better at night. This means technology-based solutions to fight social engineering, also known as “human hacking,” insider-fraud and cyber-attacks against payments. And these persistent threats include malicious software that manipulates data in an organization’s finance and ops systems and credential theft — using stolen user credentials to compromise email or finance systems and manipulate sensitive financial data.

This has become too easy, with huge databases of compromised username and password combinations available for sale to the global cyber-fraudster community, combined with sophisticated phone spoofing/hijacking for bypassing multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Fraud rings are investing heavily in technology and process. They operate like businesses, prioritizing what makes sense and what to invest in to maximize their profits (and your losses) from both accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) attacks.

These main attack vectors are continuously evolving and will be used by fraudsters to attack all types of companies. It will continue to be a game of attackers and defenders chasing one another. My advice would be: Do not become the weakest link. Implement technology to protect your payments and let fraudsters go to the house that doesn’t have locks on the door and an alarm system.

All these changes and challenges are happening during economic uncertainty and when fraud is increasingly well-organized and financed. However, there’s hope.

To combat these attack vectors, nsKnox is offering PaymentKnox™, its payment security platform, which enables treasurers, controllers, CFOs, and their teams to ensure end-to-end protection against B2B payments fraud.

With powerful technology that beats fraudsters at their own game, any organization can protect every payment, whether incoming, outgoing or intra-company.

The nsKnox platform delivers the required validated and verified confirmation for complete protection against the financial and reputational damage of payment fraud.