It is no secret that the global COVID-19 pandemic is harming the world’s economy. An unfortunate side effect of economic hardship is the rise in financial and workplace fraud.
Riaan de Villiers, Solutions Consultant at Ascertia partner LAWtrust discusses the importance of digital trust to combat workplace fraud.
According to professional fraud examiners, three factors need to be present for a person to consider committing fraud in the workplace: pressure, opportunity and rationalisation. The world’s economic hardship places pressure on people and is part of the reason why employees decide to steal from their employer.
So, if employees in your organisation are considering fraud, how can you protect yourself?
Digital trust: the backbone of anti-fraud measures
LAWtrust, in partnership with Ascertia and Entrust has been developing high-trust anti-fraud solutions for fifteen years, and when united with Ascertia’s digital trust platform and its highly interoperable solutions, combatting fraud in the workplace becomes much easier.
High trust solutions use strong cryptographic techniques to protect an organisation’s data and employees. Techniques such as identity verification, strong authentication and authorisation create forensic evidence that will make it very hard for a user to deny committing a certain transaction.
How do you attain this high trust?
Every user must pass an identity verification process. As part of the verification process, the user is issued a digital certificate. The digital certificate ties the user's real-life identity to a digital identity.
To commit a transaction of a sensitive nature, the system prompts the user to authenticate and prove their identity. Additionally, the transaction is timestamped and digitally signed to protect the transaction’s integrity. Evidence related to the transaction is stored in a digital vault.
This system assists investigators with forensic reports that provide proof of who committed the transaction and what happened during the transaction. Providing the evidence makes it hard for malicious users to commit fraud and deny committing fraud after the fact.
The system does not just prevent fraud, it also protects innocent users against identity theft and impersonation.
In these uncertain times, protecting your organisation and your users is more important than ever and implementing high-trust solutions is a big step forward to combatting fraud.
