Frank Abagnale gave a keynote session at SBC Summit Barcelona discussing the risk of criminals determined to fraudulently divert payments using GenAI deepfakes and sophisticated social engineering attacks. Payment Expert covered his session and here is an excerpt.
In a world where ever-increasing rates of crime and innovative criminals are the new normal, companies might think that considerable threats automatically mean looking for drastic measures expressed in sophisticated defenses.
Over the past forty years, Abagnale has lectured to and consulted with hundreds of financial institutions, corporations, and governments. The American was also the subject and author of the acclaimed Hollywood film “Catch Me If You Can”.
During his keynote, he emphasized his belief that education is the most powerful tool when it comes to fighting crime. Enabling users and potential victims to understand the process of crime can be a significant step in minimizing their vulnerability to fraud.
It’s not solely the education of consumers that is pivotal, but also the competence and education within companies. According to Abagnale, ‘every breach occurs because of the shortcomings of someone at a company, hackers do not cause breaches, but people do’.
Technology has also evolved communication, which has had a widespread impact on fraud and particularly social engineering, which continues to be a key asset for fraudsters.
Abagnale warned that there has never been a technology, not even AI, that can halt social engineering, education is the only tool that can slow it down and provide a valuable tool to fighting it.
He also emphasised that because of the rush to bring new technologies to market, they often fall short in terms of security from cybercrime. A further factor that fuelled the bewilderment of Abagnale was the longstanding nature of passwords, a security authentication that the American believes is ridiculously out of date, especially compared to the passkey, which is growing further into mainstream adoption.
Abagnale also made the bold prediction that passwords will no longer be utilized as an asset for security within the next few years, an evolution that he praised as being long overdue.
He was also keen to emphasize the importance of combating cybercrime, not just because of the loss to consumers but also due to the money being garnered from these crimes funding evil.
