Voice fraud spike driven by breaches and increasing use

Incidents of voice fraud climbed by 350 percent from 2013 to 2017, and increased 47 percent in 2017 to reach 1 in every 638 calls, according to a new report from Pindrop.

The Pindrop Voice Intelligence Report suggests that the development of new voice technology, the frequency of data breaches, and multi-channel fraud are driving the increase. Fraudsters are leveraging new technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, and techniques such as imitation, replay attacks, voice modification software and voice synthesis to defeat security systems.

“The opportunity for voice to serve as a primary interface is becoming a reality due to integrations with IoT devices, the take-off of voice assistants and more,” said Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan. “In turn, advanced voice technology is falling into the hands of bad actors and we’re seeing a dramatic spike in voice fraud.”

Voice security costs $14 billion per year, according to the report, and the total amortised loss per call is calculated to be $0.58.

The insurance industry suffered the greatest increase in fraudulent calls from 2016 to 2017, at 36 percent. This was followed by the banking industry, which received 20 percent more fraud calls, retailers (15 percent), and card issuers (14 percent), while fraud calls to brokerages increased only 4.5 percent.

Despite the threat of fraud, a recent Pindrop survey shows business leaders are racing to add voice capabilities to their products and services in order to give them the competitive advantage of an improved customer experience. Pindrop recently launched an instant authentication technology for call centers based on phone network forensics.

Article Topics

artificial intelligence  |  fraud  |  machine learning  |  Pindrop  |  voice authentication