Every year, 15 trillion USD flows through the Visa network, accounting for about 15% of the world economy. And the bad guys kept trying to withdraw some of that money.
Modern scammers are increasingly sophisticated
To maintain its leading position, the payment platform has invested $12 billion over the past year to build the ability to detect cyber fraud using AI (artificial intelligence), despite knowing that criminals are also spending big.
You can see everyone, from individuals who want to make quick money to truly large-scale criminal organizations that generate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year from fraud and scams, these organizations operate very organized, said Michael Jabbara, global anti-fraud solution director at Visa.
The most well-off criminal organizations today focus on scams that target consumers directly, luring them to buy or trade by manipulating their emotions.
"Consumers are always vulnerable. They can be taken advantage of and that is why we have seen a much higher rate of attack recently," said Jabbara.
How to operate
When criminals have your card information, they will automatically distribute this information on many of the supplier's websites, creating small periodic fees - the amount is low enough for the victim to not recognize for many months.
Some of these activities are increasingly similar to legitimate technology companies, providing digital services and products to scammers similar to how Google or Microsoft serve businesses.
On the dark web, criminals can buy a comprehensive set of scams. With available services, they can conduct cyber attacks on an industrial scale, using multiple payment attempts to break the lock of card numbers, expiration dates and security codes.
According to Jabbara, some cybercriminal organizations also hire risk managers to determine the level of risk in operations.
They could decide that targeting government and hospital infrastructure would be too much of a law enforcement agency's focus and too risky to pursue.
Millions of cyber attacks
To counter these unprecedented threats, Jabbara leads an anti-payment fraud team that focuses on learning about methods of committing crimes.
From a small office called the Risk Management Center in Virginia, employees analyzed multi-screen data flows, searching for models to distinguish fraud from the use of legitimate credit cards.
At the larger Cyber Fusion center, staff track potential cyber attacks targeting Visa's infrastructure day and night.
"We handle millions of attacks in many different places in our networks," Jabbara noted, stressing that most of them are automatically handled without human intervention.
visas maintain identical facilities in London and Singapore, ensuring 24-hour global monitoring.
