The widespread shift to e-commerce and touchless payments during the pandemic has escalated fraud risk in those channels, including the possibility of fraudsters combining altered photos with synthetic ID, Experian warns.

The credit reporting firm has been building out its identity and fraud protection business for existing customers, which include many of the world’s largest banks and telecommunications companies.

With the advances in technology and digitization, and evolving security threats, it’s time for smarter, more robust authentication methods, says Entersekt's Dewald Nolte.

The events of 2020 fueled new customer expectations, accelerated digital transformation and allowed B2B companies to react and deliver. But customers’ changing expectations are not going to disappear, says MSTS' Brandon Spear.

With Microsoft, Equifax and others acknowledging that the SolarWinds hack of U.S. government entities had affected their holdings, security teams and vendors have put the holiday aside while continuing around-the-clock surveillance to ensure no financial services or payments networks have been hacked.

By upgrading permissions and defining access, firms can get ahead of the new threat, says vArmour's Marc Woolword.

Remote learning and work heightens the security risk, says Pulse Secure's Mike Riemer.

Manual transaction monitoring doesn't scale to the acceleration of online activity, leading to many potential false negatives, and reduced efficiencies as teams demand quick growth and analysts take time to train properly, says Acuant's Jose Caldera.

Tokenization, click to pay and other advancements boost efficiency and safety, says the Electronic Payments Coalition's Jeff Tassey.

Paying on delivery with tokenization, biometric fingerprint cards, vein scanning or phone-to-phone with a variety of card payment options helps create a universe of consumer choice, convenience, personal preference and better fraud protection, says Radar Payments' Jane Loginova.

Global collaboration among researchers creates a network effect to share resources and spot threats, says Bugcrowd's Casey Ellis.

The e-commerce expansion borne out of the pandemic heightens the balancing act between security and user experience, a challenge Forter and Nuvei hope to address through a mix of data analysis and an expansive network of merchants.

It's important that breach mitigation strategies take younger people, gaming and school into account, says ForgeRock's Ben Goodman.

“If you get your credit decisions right and you manage fraud well, you can run a very efficient bank. That’s an area where AI is very applicable,” Toronto-Dominion Bank's chief AI officer says.

Crooks are hiding payment skimmers within plain sight on retailer websites, using social contact buttons in a way that's hard for security protection to spot.

Improving data management can also help future-proof data infrastructure and put the appropriate protections in place before it’s too late, says Cohesity's Michael Letschin.

AI can add an extra layer that's hard for fraudsters to beat, says Nuance Communications' Simon Marchand.

There’s no escaping fraud during one of the merriest months of the year as cyber thieves are busy trying to make their own wishes come true.

With the globe pivoting to e-commerce during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, an array of new opportunities have arisen for fraudsters, and merchants have found themselves being increasingly hit by different forms of chargeback fraud.

Using AI can manage both privacy and security as part of AML reform, says Giant Oak's Gary Shiffman.