Boosting data-breach resilience through identity protection for staff and customers

Rise of AI exacerbates insider fraud risk

In early 2024, a report from Adecco Group revealed that 70% of employees were now using generative AI at work^[2]. Concerningly, only 43% of C-Suite executives believe their leadership team has sufficient expertise to understand the risks and opportunities of AI. Without proper governance and safeguards, AI represents a considerable area of risk for businesses. Employees who master AI could harness the technology to commit more widespread internal fraud, while criminals using advanced AI will be able to mount increasingly difficult-to-detect attacks on companies and their employees.

While employees pose a significant potential fraud risk to businesses, they also represent the first line of defence against cyber-attacks and data breaches. Protecting your employees’ identities plays a key role in reducing data breach risk and we are increasingly working with HR teams to help them improve their employee welfare and benefit schemes to better support employees. When you consider that 82% of data breaches involve a human element such as phishing, stolen credentials, or social engineering tactics, the direct connection between employee identity theft and business vulnerabilities, cannot be ignored.

As the threat of data breaches grows, employees have a central role to play in maintaining robust cyber-defences at the companies where they work. If employees understand how to safeguard their own sensitive data, identify phishing attacks and deflect social engineering attempts, they can contribute significantly to protecting businesses against malicious hackers and data breaches.

Equip employees to protect themselves – and your business

At Experian, we are seeing organisations increasingly recognising the value of educating employees in basic security practices and fraud prevention. Helping staff to protect themselves against fraud often involves quite simple insights, such as knowing that it’s safer to use a credit card than a debit card due to the additional protections provided. Or that clicking on links in social media or using QR codes to access services is risky. There’s a great temptation to use these ‘frictionless’ methods, but such quick links are prone to tampering by hackers. Instead, people should choose slightly less frictionless but more secure options, such as accessing websites directly from web browsers.

As well as providing training, companies are enhancing their employee benefits packages with services to help people protect their own identity, data and systems. These may include real-time credit-monitoring services that tracks changes to credit reports and warns of any potential fraud or identity theft, alerts of suspicious activity on personal accounts, data and device protection systems and fraud-resolution services for affected employees. Such services like Experian Identity Plus empower employees to protect themselves and their data, as well as provide mechanisms for detecting potential breaches and resolving issues before they escalate.

An educated workforce that understands how to protect personal data is a valuable asset in protecting business data and systems. Offering credit-monitoring and identity-protection services as an additional employee benefit is relatively inexpensive for businesses – yet it can have a big impact on reinforcing cybersecurity defences, and enhancing employee well-being. Providing these services for employees also presents evidence to regulators, as well as business partners and supply chains, that you’re taking active measures to tackle fraud and prevent data breaches.

Added-value fraud-prevention services are a win-win

The drive to better protect people – both employees and customers – is growing fast in the market. Fraud-prevention and credit-monitoring services are now being offered by many businesses to their customers, as an added-value service. These services are particularly relevant to big-ticket purchases such as car purchases, where finance may be required.

By offering fraud-prevention and identity protection services as an add-on to major purchases, companies can give customers greater confidence in their transactions, build trust and engender brand loyalty. It’s also an important way for businesses to protect their own systems against fraud originating from customers – so it’s a win-win for businesses and consumers alike. The growing consumer interest in data security and credit protection also means that these add-on services could become a valuable differentiator for brands in the market.

Build security capabilities to thwart the fraudsters

With the rise of AI presenting an increased threat to companies from both inside and outside of the business, leaders need to be on top of the risks and implement appropriate measures to tighten security. Education has a key role to play in helping individuals reinforce their defences against fraudsters and AI-powered hackers. Whether those individuals are employees or customers, businesses can reap the benefits by providing fraud-prevention services to strengthen protections across the board.