Online scams spread through modern businesses like wildfire, and in 2022, the temperature only increased. In just 12 months, cybercriminals stole around $55 billion from their targets. Businesses must take the lead on extinguishing this wildfire, both individually and together in alliances like the GASA.
When alliances act, legislators listen. Our partners in the Global Anti-Scam Alliance compiled 10 recommendations to protect consumers online, and they’re presenting then to the European Commission and other authorities at the CyberSec Europe Expo & Conference.
As a key stakeholder, EBRAND’s sending our CPO Jano Vico to the conference, to represent your interests as internet users trying to stay boosted and protected online. This whole process also delivers a learning opportunity, and we can guide you through each of GASA’s recommendations with some extra applied insights.
Here’s a sneak peek at GASA’s recommendations, and why they matter to you:
1. Raise awareness and unify consumers against online scams
Understanding the typical tricks, channels, language, and tactics around phishing attacks helps you identify attackers as they arrive in your inbox. When local and national authorities spearhead scam awareness, they unify companies and consumers against digital threats. A recent RSA Security report found that security awareness training reduces phishing susceptibility by 72%, keeping countless targets safe from cybercrime.
2. Facilitate One National, Easy, Online Reporting Platform
The RSA will petition the European Commission to create a reporting platform for flagging scammers and their scams. Resources like these help victims hold criminals accountable, and create a database for warning users about new and emerging scams. Access to global blocklists and scam databases already helps EBRAND clients tackle digital risks in the X-RAY platform.
3. Set-up cross-organizational support for fraud victims
Collaboration empowers success online, and different online scams require different organizations and specializations to defeat. For example, Domain security experts tackle DNS attacks or cache poisoning attacks best, whereas IP lawyers deploy the most effective tools against counterfeiters and trademark infringement scams.
4. Develop Infrastructural Tools to Protect Consumers
While awareness helps potential targets identify scams online, research shows that knowledge alone can’t keep victims safe. Modern cybercriminals deploy advanced, tech-enabled deception tactics, above the threshold of reasonable awareness. Professional scams powered by Deep Fakes and ChatGPT render the rule “if it is too good to be true, it probably is” obsolete. Those in the firing line must therefore equip themselves with the tools to disarm scammers.
Solutions like EBRAND’s Digital Risk Protection platform deliver the tools to search, prioritize, and takedown online threats, along with close consultancy to promote successful adoption. Protecting organizations on an infrastructural level supports scam management that’s built to last.
Beyond shoring up their own internal defenses, businesses protect consumers by thinking like a hacker. This emerging practice, known as External Attack Surface Management (EASM) helps businesses look past their own perimeters, and create a network of secure infrastructure to keep themselves and their clients safe from online scams.
5. Make Fraud Traceable
The GASA advocate for extra measures to help authorities and fraud victims track scammers across the internet. Solutions like Corporate Domain Management help streamline this process, as experts consolidate and maintain crucial domain assets like WHOIS data, authentication certificates, and DNSSEC. Ultimately, digital verification efforts should not stop with domains.
Businesses also benefit from solutions like Online Brand Protection, helping them search these marketplaces and social media platforms to maintain their own compliance, as well as flagging and eliminating impersonators and counterfeiters.
6. Set-up a Dedicated Consumer Cyber Security Center
Cybercrime’s innovation and evolution makes it tough for conventional law enforcement agencies to keep up. To equip nations and their citizens with the expertise to combat online scams, the RSA highlights new organizations like the Singapore Anti-Scam Command. Such organizations dedicate themselves to identifying, illuminating, and enforcing online scams.
7. Establish a Global Scam Data Sharing Hub
Scammers rarely operate in their own country, and rarely stick to one channel when they’re launching attacks. Scam data hubs help you connect the dots, pinning the scam to the scammer and cutting off attackers at the source. In EBRAND’s risk protection platform, X-RAY, its threat clusterization capability plays a complementary role, helping users eliminate serial scammers.
8. Make Service Providers responsible & liable for scammer enablement
This recommendation highlights a service provider’s responsibility for KYC (know your customer, to verify users and deter scammers. Ensuring each provider’s duty of care, whether you’re EBRAND, Facebook, or Amazon, dissuades scammers and keeps consumers safe.
9. Allow Preventive Action (Warn, Block, Stop)
Modern risk solutions help monitor businesses monitor potential threats as they evolve, taking a nuanced approach to unique, developing threats. The power to analyze, whitelist, or takedown a possible infringement delivers the preventative action necessary to keep businesses safe from online scams.
10. Enact an International Scam Investigation & Prosecution Network
International problems require international solutions, especially when the stakes are so high. The RSA urge the European commission to expand Interpol and Europol’s charter, working with international stakeholders to form a powerful, practical and effective organization for turning the tide on scams.
Conclusions
The RSA’s list of recommendations misses a couple of key areas, which EBRAND will be happy to help out with at the CyberSec Europe Expo & Conference. Fortunately for you, you’re in the right place for updates about the event, along with other industry updates to keep you ahead of online scams.
