Global banks and financial institutions are bracing for the increase in cybercrime and online fraud that accompanies an economic downturn and merger activity. Noted by leading analysts during a recent customer event, the spike in attacks has already begun and will climb significantly in 2009.

In response, Entrust hosted a dedicated Fraud Forum in London with Europe's top financial institutions to jointly explore fraud prevention strategies. Confirmed by leading analyst groups, organizations need to consider fraud detection, multifactor authentication and other security systems to prevent further fraud losses.

Fraud Forum highlights:

• Financial institutions dedicating more resources to protecting brand reputation from fraud loss
• Banks, FIs are evolving online fraud prevention strategies to be able to quickly respond to ever-changing threat landscape
• Demand for multichannel (e.g., call centers, IVR, ATM) fraud detection solutions on the rise
• Organizations are disappointed in the lack of non-invasive, real-time fraud detection solutions
• Increase in criminal organizations leveraging social engineering tactics for malware deployment.

Based on feedback from the London Fraud Forum, these organizations understandably place a premium on protecting their reputation and brand image. Financial institutions are increasingly focused on evolving strategies that protect online channels from fraud, but also identified the need to leverage a system that could transcend multiple channels, such as call centers, interactive voice response-based (IVR) systems and ATMs.

The newest attacks, including evolved phishing and man-in-the-browser techniques, use sophisticated social engineering tactics to install malware on end-user computers. The most proven method to help stop online fraud attacks is the use of a comprehensive fraud detection and strong authentication solution.

Attending financial institutions agreed that platforms that have a wide range of authenticators and can lower the total cost of ownership - particularly with zero-touch fraud detection capabilities - are preferable.

While the organizations in attendance all agreed that real-time fraud detection was one of the major priorities, they also identified a number of other security requirements during the event. These include the rapid deployment of new detection measures, highlighting the need for both rule and statistical approaches; ability to purchase an off-the-shelf solution; non-intrusive deployment across any number of applications; mistake-free, trustworthy fraud detection; and the ability to implement new functionality in a quick, efficient manner.

Components of an affordable, comprehensive fraud prevention platform, Entrust provides zero-touch fraud detection, multifactor authentication and EV SSL digital certificates for banks and financial institutions.