Cybersecurity remains one of the hottest topics around. While browsing today’s media I noted one article said that cyber attacks rose by 250% during the pandemic. Apparently it was the perfect time for scammers and hackers to wield their weapons.
This may be one of the things that prompted Mastercard to launch Cyber Secure, “a first-of-its-kind, AI-powered suite of tools that allows banks to assess cyber risk across their ecosystem and prevent potential breaches.”
It all comes down to the fact that the digital economy is expanding rapidly and is more complex. Alongside this positive news, comes the less appealing revelation that the growth creates a vulnerability that some are delighted to take advantage of. For example,it is estimated that one business will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds by next year.
Ajay Bhalla, president, Cyber & Intelligence, Mastercard said:
“The world today faces a $5.2 trillion cyber breach problem. This is one of the biggest threats to consumer trust. At Mastercard, we aim to stay ahead of fraudsters and to continually evolve and enhance our protection of cyber environments for our bank and merchant customers. With Cyber Secure, we have a suite of AI-powered cyber capabilities that allows us to do just that, ensuring trust across every experience, for businesses and consumers.”
Cyber Secure will enable banks “to continuously monitor and track their cyber posture,” writes Polly Harrison. It will allow banks to be more proactive in managing and preventing data compromise, as well as protecting the integrity of the payment ecosystem and consumer data. It should also, of course, prevent financial loss caused by attacks.
Mastercard has based its new product on the AI capapbilities of RickRecon, which it purchased in 2020. It uses advanced AI for risk assessment, which evaluates multiple public and proprietary data sources and checks it against 40 security and infrastructure criteria.
Harrison writes, “In 2019, Mastercard saved stakeholders $20bn of fraud through its AI-enabled cyber systems,” so it is to be hoped that Cyber Secure prevents even more theft in 2021 and beyond.