There’s no doubt that cyber criminals are becoming increasingly proficient in bypassing traditional fraud prevention tools. Recently the Financial Times reported on the attack on Citigroup – which compromised the account names and numbers of 200,000 Citi card customers  – and a  survey carried out by Unisys  in the first quarter of 2011 reported a four-year high in financial crime in the UK.

At risk of reputational damage and hefty payouts, and faced with increased pressure from regulators to enhance procedures for authenticating online customer accounts, banks are certainly being kept on their toes. So what steps can they take to bolster security?

Moving away from the preventative strategy of passwords and encryption, financial institutions can now adopt a more effective approach to detect crime. Customer behavioural profiling, for instance, can now accurately spot transactional behaviour that is potentially criminal. Taking into consideration factors such as age and postcode, it can carry out peer group analysis, which flags extreme deviations when a customer’s behaviour is significantly different from others in its peer group. Put simply, their behaviour will give them away regardless of what channel they use.

So with front end detection tools, such as ID authentication, no longer resilient enough to single-handedly deter criminals, banks are under pressure to keep one step ahead of their cyber fraudster adversities. Couple this with the significant time and cost savings of back end transactional monitoring and you’ll quickly realise that it’s not a nicety, it’s a necessity.