Although document fraud has existed for many years, it has developed with the digitalization of businesses. While it was fairly obvious to detect fraudulent documents in paper format, this detection proves more complicated with digitized documents, which continue to increase and can quickly become difficult to manage. So how can you ensure that documents and supporting evidence transmitted or received are truly compliant with the originals? The advice and solutions from Sébastien Guillaume, Technical Director at Oceane Consulting Data Management, to shed light on this.
According to the latest PWC study, nearly half of companies worldwide were victims of fraud in 2020, and a growing number of them are affected by different types of fraud (cybercrime, document fraud, extortion attempts, identity theft, falsification of proof of residence, resources, civil status, contracts or company documents, administrative or business documents, etc.). Because, despite its many benefits, digitalization conversely allows fraudsters to access company information systems much more easily and extract confidential information from them.
Furthermore, digitalization has also created a massification effect, with much larger volumes of digitized documents, but also faster and more efficient distribution. No need to print and send by post unprotected digital documents can quickly be forged, transmitted and be considered authentic. As for manual detection of fake documents in digital format (in PDF format, for example), it is much more difficult and often requires specialized tools.
DOCUMENT FRAUD, WHAT RISKS?
99% of document frauds are for profit. With the transmission of false documents, fraudsters can easily trigger fund transfers and extort money. This is precisely why it is important to implement a continuous control system.
BEST PRACTICES TO COMBAT FRAUD
To combat document fraud, compliance control and document authentication are essential. But institutional best practices and management and employee engagement are equally important! Indeed, regardless of the type of software installed, if your employees are not aware of the risks of document fraud, the human risk persists. Thus, for the control system implemented within your organization to work, be sure to accompany its implementation with awareness and training initiatives for your employees.
TECHNOLOGY IN THE SERVICE OF COMBATING DOCUMENT FRAUD
To ensure the security and compliance of your documents in electronic format, several types of solutions exist. Depending on your sector of activity, your objectives, and also your resources, you can consider one or more control options. Here is each of the solutions below:
- Electronic signature. As its name suggests, based on a timestamping system, it is used to authenticate the signatures of digital documents.
- 2D codes (which include QR codes). They are affixed by the issuer to the document to encrypt its content.
- Blockchain. By calculating the fingerprint of each document, the issuer deposits it in the blockchain, composed of a consortium of organizations offering solutions to control documents, guarantee their authenticity, and ensure that documents received by third-party organizations are truly compliant with the originals.
- The use of internal and external resources or open data (or open APIs) allows you to control that the information received is truly compliant with that existing in the company's files or to verify customer identity. This solution is mainly used in the banking, insurance, and public administration sectors (where it is used, for example, to verify identity or validate proof of residence).
- RPA (Robotic Process Automation). It allows you to automate previously manual control systems by extracting information from digitized documents.
- AI-based tools. They can, through learning, identify all modifications made to a document and detect non-compliance, anomalies, errors or potential fraud on documents.
- Hyperscience tools. They are capable of extracting intelligent information and analyzing it to automate the entire document verification process.
