The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and Georgia State University’s Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group (EBCS) are forming a three-year partnership to address online payments-related financial fraud, according to a press release.
The EBCS will surveil the darknet and encrypted web channels to better understand how online payments-related criminal activity affect the payments landscape and promote safer, more-efficient payment solutions and practices.
Payment innovations such as digital wallets, mobile payments and person-to-person payment apps offer convenience, but also expose users to new types of fraud. Bad actors can steal identity components, like Social Security numbers, addresses, authentication credentials and account details, and then sell them through markets hosted on encrypted web channels. Their actions create far-reaching harm across the financial system and broader economy.
EBCS uses behavioral science and innovations like machine learning to research, document and minimize cyber harm. Collaborating with Federal Reserve payments experts, EBCS researchers and Georgia State Ph.D. students will monitor online criminal markets for payments-related activity to document trends, identify new types of fraud and support a better understanding of crimes surrounding new payment types.
The partnership will attempt to identify the impacts of the introduction of digital assets such as central bank digital currencies on online criminal markets in other countries.
Information: https://www.atlantafed.org/promoting-safer-payments-innovation.aspx
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