By Adedapo Adesanya
Global financial services company, Mastercard, has launched a solution which helps banks assess cyber risks and prevent breaches across digital ecosystems.
Called Cyber Secure, the AI-powered solution comprises a set of tools that enable banks to identify and prioritise threats and vulnerabilities. Banks could also help merchants assess and understand their own cyber risks and protect them from potential fraudsters.
Cyberattacks and cyber fraud are quickly becoming the bane of digital activities around the world. As businesses continue to adopt and expand their online presence and digitise operations, fraudsters are also becoming ever more present in the digital space, growing in both the scope and sophistication of their activities.
According to estimations, by next year at least one business will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds.
As the digital economy expands, both in size and complexity, so too do its points of vulnerability that may be subject to attack. One example of this is the rapidly advancing Internet of Things – 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated by people and their devices every day, with 90 per cent of this generated in the last two years alone.
This sheer size of data potentially at risk makes it necessary for banks and other digitally-inclined organisations to invest a lot in cybersecurity.
Speaking on this, Mr Ajay Bhalla, President, Cyber & Intelligence at Mastercard noted “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,” he concluded.
Mastercard’s Cyber Secure is expected to leverage RiskRecon, a software company which provides third-party cybersecurity services to organisations.
The software company gives real-time cyber risk assessment using an automated risk-assessment system tailored for specific organisations. The company was acquired by Mastercard in 2020.
According to Mastercard, the risk assessment is performed using advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) that combines multiple public and proprietary data sources.
The AI evaluates the data against 40 security and infrastructure criteria, with the impact and importance of each vulnerability analyzed to produce a cyber risk rating and issue priority navigator.
With its new solution, Mastercard hopes to empower banks with the ability to continuously monitor and track their cyber posture. It also aims to “moves our industry to a more proactive state in managing and preventing data compromise, protecting the integrity of the payment ecosystem and consumer data.”
Mastercard reportedly saved stakeholders $20 billion of fraud through its AI-enabled cyber systems in 2019.
Aduragbemi Omiyale 
Dipo Olowookere