BI.ZONE and MegaFon join efforts to counter banking fraud

BI.ZONE and telecom operator MegaFon have expanded their cooperation in the field of cybersecurity. As part of their partnership, the operator began to provide real-time information to the cybersecurity developer about fraudsters and their victims

September 24, 2019

This information is then automatically available to all users of the threat intelligence sharing platform—a joint project between BI.ZONE and the Association of Banks of Russia.

According to BI.ZONE, 80% of the thefts from individuals’ accounts in Russia are committed using social engineering methods: the victim falls for a scam and voluntarily sends money to the fraudsters. Most often, attackers communicate with bank customers by phone and via SMS messages. Therefore, the data about incidents possessed by mobile operators significantly reduces the number of attacks in the financial sector.

Thanks to the collaboration of BI.ZONE with MegaFon, the threat intelligence sharing platform shall be updated with information on criminals and their victims as well as the resources used in phishing attacks and malware infections. If this information was to be applied to the antifraud system within a financial organization, it would significantly increase its level of bank fraud detection. At the same time, special rules developed by the analysts at BI.ZONE will make it possible to determine with a high degree of accuracy those subscribers whose devices have been infected with malware.

Our partnership with BI.ZONE began during the pilot launch of the platform—we provided addresses of malicious and phishing domains at the start. Now we are expanding cooperation by adding data about criminals and their victims to the common threat database. This information is especially relevant for players in the financial sector, as it allows them to effectively deal with bank fraud. We record the events of the latter and transfer relevant data to the analysts at BI.ZONE

Sergey Khrenov

Head of Prevention of Fraud and Revenue Losses at MegaFon PJSC

Up-to-date information is a key success factor in the fight against modern digital threats. However, no financial institution alone can afford to accumulate the sufficient amount of data to prevent cyberattacks. This would require significant costs both for acquiring information from various sources, and for maintaining a large team of highly qualified experts in the field of cybersecurity. In this day and age, it is only through combined efforts in collecting data that we can truly appreciate the benefits of cyberthreat intelligence: reliable proactive protection with significant savings on resources

Anton Okoshkin

BI.ZONE Technical Director

The threat intelligence sharing platform is a joint project between BI.ZONE and the Association of Banks of Russia, which was designed to build proactive defence for financial institutions. The solution helps to counteract cyberattacks thanks to the collaboration between participants, careful selection of intel sources, taking into account industry and regional specifics. The platform users can access the latest data available: tens of thousands of indicators of compromise (IoCs) are automatically added to the platform daily which helps to detect potential threats. Data sources are the organizations connected to the platform under the Association of Banks, as well as technology partners, including FinCERT Bank of Russia, developers of cybersecurity tools, major telecom operators, BI.ZONE CERT incident monitoring and response center, and many others.