How Voice Biometrics Can Help the ATO Prevent Further Superannuation Fraud Attempts
To help alleviate the economic impact of COVID-19, many countries have implemented extraordinary assistance schemes to provide support to financially affected individuals. In Australia, the federal government approved the early release of personal superannuation of up to AUD 10,000 until June 30 and a further AUD 10,000 from July 1 to September 24 as one of the assistance measures. Whilst this early release program can greatly assist those who are in financial struggles, it also opened new opportunities for fraudsters to take advantage of the situation.
The reports of fraudulent activities regarding this scheme provided details of how fraudsters stole money from others via account takeover attacks. Using stolen personal information, fraudsters were able to steal money by accessing the victims’ superannuation funds. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are currently investigating this incident. The AFP has stated that they were investigating up to 150 potential victims and have executed five search warrants and frozen several bank accounts.
The ATO quickly suspended the scheme and later reopened applications for the scheme after implementing stronger end-to-end security. One security method the ATO could have implemented when the scheme was first implemented was requiring a voice biometric verification as one of the risk filters. With Auraya’s voice biometric technology, the ATO could have required people who were applying to verify their identity and enroll their voiceprint when submitting their applications. This process would have enabled the ATO to voice match each applicant against the other applicants to ensure that the same voice wasn't being used for multiple identities.
Auraya’s voice biometric technology can be implemented in contact centers, web browsers and mobile applications, allowing the users to submit applications securely and seamlessly on any platform. This frictionless method can also be added as a part of a multi-factor authentication approach to further improve security.
With Auraya’s voice biometric technology, organizations can make it harder for fraudsters who already possess stolen personal information to perpetuate scams. Auraya’s voice biometric technology can also detect electronically generated and recorded playback voices. Once a fraudster has provided a voiceprint then that fraudster can be detected every time they reappear trying another scam.
