Credible data collection, monitoring and analysis are imperative as new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are adopted to help combat cyber fraud and cybercrime during the covid-19 crisis. This is the view of Myla Pilão, Director for Technical Marketing at Trend Micro, a global reference in cybersecurity. The expert says that through a large set of data, algorithms can be defined to learn and generate new discoveries related to threats in the cyber environment.
"To some extent, we saw how Artificial Intelligence and machine learning have been used to collect information and be able to digest that data in ways that relate to combating digital fraud for the population during the pandemic," says Myla.
The executive assesses, however, that certain challenges faced limit organizations to fully adopt these technologies, in addition to the aggravated need to provide information with a sense of urgency. Some examples include the ability to access data due to privacy, and also the contamination of information by the way it is processed or stored.
The expert, who is also responsible for leading the security threat monitoring division at Trend Micro, assessed that many occurrences related to corporate email fraud, as well as impacts on financial transactions and e-commerce have been detected since the beginning of the campaign. crisis of the covid-19. "In large part, 95% of pandemic-related attacks are predominantly using spam messages and phishing techniques as a gateway," he says.
From the perspective of fraud related to purchases in virtual stores, Myla points out that naturally there is a greater incidence since the volume of orders in e-commerce grows due to the social distance imposed to contain the outbreak of the new coronavirus. "This scenario gave rise to the opportunity to use fraudulent websites to intercept some of these transactions", he points out. The expert says that Brazil was included in the list of the 30 largest countries that Trend Micro detected as the target of addresses of pages on the Internet (URLs) with malicious traffic since the beginning of the crisis.
In addition, the Trend Micro executive also pointed out that the crisis has created other opportunities for counterfeiters to profit from cyber environments. Myla mentioned one recent research made by the company that detailed the conditions of the market known as underground. "What is remarkable is that the range of trades in that market has remained unchanged in recent years. However, the trade in the exploitation of card sales terminals (POS) and stolen credit card information remain part of the four main most popular offers in the underground cyberattacks market, "he says.
Myla Pilão also pointed out that criminals made illegal profits at the expense of consumers and organizations during the covid-19 crisis. Among some mechanisms detected are the theft of credentials on video and game streaming platforms, the use of digital extortion through ransomware techniques, and also fraud related to requests for donations for the pandemic and emergency financial aid paid by authorities of government for the population. "This is unique to the current crisis. That is, we have not seen it used in the past", highlights the expert.
The director of Trend Micro said that in order to help combat fraud and cybercrime scenarios during the current crisis, public and private institutions must act together. "A critical part of any cybersecurity strategy is to help direct public and private sectors' confidence, in addition to consumers, to protect their rights and digital data through a balanced approach to cybersecurity," he concludes.
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