Financial institutions are prime targets for cybercriminals for money laundering and fraud, and it continues to get worse every year. According to a recent IBM report, attacks in the Finance and Insurance sector accounted for almost 20% of all attacks in the top-10 industries in 2019. Additionally, in 2020, cyber attacks against banks between February and April alone increased by 238%. Meanwhile, financial institutions are constantly required to comply with laws and regulations and provide transparency at all times to ensure there are no illegal activities related to their organization. Failure to do so can lead to high financial penalties, full shutdowns, irreversible reputational damage, personal legal liability of the executive team and board, and even national security risks in institutions handling sensitive government data.
Financial institutions are on the front lines in the fight against money laundering, and they can’t afford to fail. As digital transactions become more prevalent, particularly in the wake of COVID-19 and remote work, AML efforts have become impossible without an effective WEBINT solution. A report by Duff and Phelps stated that 2020 AML fine values in six months have already surpassed 2019. Fines for AML failings totaled $706 million globally in the first half of 2020 alone. According to the report, the four key failings in AML compliance are customer due diligence, AML management, suspicious activity tracing, and compliance supervision and oversight. Many of these cases could have been prevented with effective threat intelligence, which involves the aggregation and analysis of data from numerous sources in the surface, deep, and dark web. By employing ongoing threat intelligence solutions, cyber risk and AML teams can streamline investigations, KYC processes, background checks, and even take preventative measures by discovering content that may indicate a crime is being planned. This requires constant detecting, collecting, and analyzing content throughout the open, deep, and dark web. This is simply not feasible without AI and machine learning technology, which are necessary to conduct in-depth background checks, ownership identification, ESG standards evaluation, cryptocurrency analysis, asset tracing, and more on big data.
Cobwebs Technologies’ WEBINT platform is powered by AI and machine learning technology, enabling it to scan and analyze vast amounts of data across all of the web’s open and hidden layers. Cobwebs’ platform enables financial institutions, analysts, and security professionals to conduct effective AML activities and investigations from one centralized dashboard with all of the tools they need to automatically uncover and map hidden networks, and generate data-driven risk insights. AI and machine learning technologies enable high-speed scanning and analysis of vast amounts of data, reducing investigation resources as well as time from weeks to minutes.
Due diligence is critical in preventing money laundering and is a process that financial institutions invest significant amounts of time and resources in. Thorough due diligence in today’s digital world requires generating insights from web intelligence and in-depth investigations for effective hiring, partnerships, and even client management. With Cobwebs Technologies WEBINT platform, financial organizations can easily and quickly conduct in-depth background checks on organizations and people of interest, including potential candidates and partners. Cobwebs’ technology scans content throughout the web’s open and hidden layers and detects potentially harmful behavior based on context and sentiment in content found online.
AI and machine learning are must-have tools in every financial institution’s toolbox, to prevent money laundering and breaches, and provide insights that can be used to remediate security gaps and ensure compliance with relevant regulations. Today, financial institutions use Cobwebs Technologies’ platform to conduct KYC processes, active cryptocurrency tracing and analysis, proactive intelligence management, in-depth due diligence, background checks, and more. All of this is done from one comprehensive platform, with a centralized dashboard and all of the built-in tools, features, and capabilities needed for proactive management of AML efforts, crises, and vulnerabilities.
With Cobwebs Technologies, financial organizations can be proactive in their efforts to prevent money laundering by supervising their portfolio and detecting relevant content that may indicate reputation damage, risks, and money-laundering activity. Cobwebs’ platform enables real-time automated alerts with predefined triggers so that analysts and security teams can stay up to date at all times for round-the-clock supervision and protection, and faster response and remediation times.
