Can technology prevent fraud?

With the recent spate of Internet banking scams and phishing attacks on social networks, companies have an obligation to protect their staff and the company itself from being attacked through these channels. This is according to JOHN MC LOUGHLIN of J2 Software.

South African banking customers were scammed out of R180-million in 2010 alone, compared to R40-million the previous year. Insiders are instrumental in the effective commission of these crimes, criminals are colluding with people who have expert knowledge to circumvent measures put in place by banks to safeguard their systems.

According to research by SA Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric), South Africa alternated between third and fourth place among countries with the highest incidents of phishing, a sophisticated crime in which criminals trick customers into disclosing confidential banking details before raiding their accounts, in the last three to four years.

Unprecedented levels of fraudulent emails are currently being circulated in an attempt to elicit private information from banking clients to gain access to their money. Our vision is to change the way companies address Internet security. As the malware landscape continues to evolve there is one constant – reactive solutions that rely on identifying malware will only ever have limited effectiveness. Moreover, a network or computer can never be guaranteed to be free from threats – now or in the future. The key is to protect the data.

By installing data protection software, one is deploying the most comprehensive, real-time data protection available for users of the web. Data protection software provides anti-phishing, it prevents identity and data theft by identifying whenever a user navigates to a scam phishing site.

It prevents the site from loading, thus safeguarding you from entering confidential data into these web pages. Your software is trained to recognise popular phishing targets. Whenever you attempt to navigate to a phishing page, you are warned through a message in your browser.

The software protects the data that one enters online from being harvested by key loggers. Key loggers are forms of Spyware or Trojans that monitor one’s computer activities and covertly record the keystrokes entered by a user. Criminals use key loggers to steal people’s identity, usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, banking details, SSN, etc.

The anti-key logging features of this software work on multiple levels of one’s operating system and are far more powerful in terms of protecting data than those measures employed by conventional anti-virus solutions.

Many key logging Trojans also have a screen capture facility enabling data to be stolen from online keypads, drop down menus etc. The software prevents Trojans from stealing sensitive information by preventing them taking pictures of your screen. Once again, this feature ensures that users are far safer browsing the net than if they merely have conventional anti-virus software installed.

One of the main anti-key logging measures of the software is that anything one enters into the web fields in the browser is automatically scrambled, it is replaced with fake random characters. This is what any key logger in your computer would pick up – not your real key entries. When you see the scrambler working, you know your key entries are being protected.

With solutions being delivered using cloud computing or Software-as-a-Service models, clients can now gain immediate control over their email management systems and their budgets. There expense is purely the monthly per seat fee with no need for additional spend on hardware, software or training.

By connecting existing in-house email servers, organisations can benefit from the carrier-grade infrastructure, and services including data leak prevention solutions, email archiving, and email continuity.

J2 Software focuses on neutralising the two greatest threats to internet users ‚ key logging spyware and phishing attacks. These two attack methods are the cause of almost 95 percent of all data stolen from PC users.

Our solutions solve the problem of identity theft and stops phishing. By protecting against key logging and screen captures every time you enter data online, and by preventing phishing sites from loading in your browser, we can provide safe, secure browsing.

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