Local user, data and cybersecurity architectures company Puleng Technologies has partnered with Madrid-based online fraud prevention specialist multinational buguroo to reduce the impact of online bank fraud in South Africa.

Puleng Technologies will offer and support buguroo’s behavioural biometrics solution – bugFraud – to its banking clients in the region, helping them to proactively identify and stop fraudsters attempting to access customer accounts, says Puleng Technologies CEO Muhammed Mayet.

The flagship bugFraud anti-fraud solution identifies fraud during the entire customer journey in digital banking channels, from login to logout, and even during the onboarding phase by combining device assessment, malware detection, as well as advanced, machine learning-based behavioural biometrics, to continuously ensure the bank customer is who they claim to be.

The solution builds unique biometric profiles for each and every banking customer; boosting banks’ abilities to prevent online fraud, as well as ensuring legitimate account holders have a frictionless online banking experience.

The bugFraud solution also has a Fraudster Hunter feature, enabling banks to build up unique profiles of the fraudsters discovered in their infrastructures and providing them with the intelligence to proactively prevent similar campaigns in the future.

The tool’s link-analysis capabilities also enable banking organisations to unveil complex fraud rings operating within their infrastructures, for example, where a single fraud ring is controlling multiple mule accounts to run money laundering operations.

Digital bank fraud is a growing problem in South Africa, Puleng Technologies says. In 2018 alone, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) reported a 75% increase in fraudulent incidents targeting online and mobile bank account holders, costing an estimated R262.8-million.

A further spike in criminal behaviour was recorded this year, as fraudsters focus on Covid-19-related phishing campaigns to steal user credentials, as well as distribute malware that enables them to hijack online banking sessions, known as Account Takeovers.

“buguroo's anti-fraud technology is already widely deployed by leading banks in Europe and Latin America. We are delighted to be teaming up with buguroo to offer its behavioural biometrics solutions to banks in South Africa too,” says Mayet.

"Puleng has a long history of helping banking organisations secure their infrastructures against an array of emerging threats,” says buguroo VP Tim Ayling.

“Puleng’s deep expertise and local market knowledge will play a vital part as we introduce our innovative bugFraud solution to the South African market. Puleng’s dedication to understanding our technology – and how it can be applied in its customers’ environments – places us in a fantastic position to help reduce the impact of fraud in the country.”