Dive Brief:

• Financial communications network SWIFT on Tuesday introduced a new tool designed to help customers detect fraudulent payments and help banks identify unusual payment activity.
• Part of SWIFT's customer security program, Daily Validation Reports can improve the possibility of cancelling fraudulent transfers, according to the announcement. 
• The reports will "give customers an accurate summary of their message flows, affording them an independent means of verifying their messaging activity and detecting any unusual patterns," according to the announcement. 

Dive Insight:

SWIFT has been criticized for not taking security seriously enough after criminals used SWIFT messages to help steal a record-breaking $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank in February. Following the attack, additional banks in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world began checking for possible security breaches related to the SWIFT global financial messaging network.

SWIFT recently created a dedicated internal Customer Security Intelligence team to bolster its customer information sharing initiative, which aims to help thwart cyberattacks across the network. 

"Smaller institutions, in particular, are currently dependent on the accuracy of the data on their own systems, but in the event of a security breach, their locally stored payment and reconciliation data may be altered or unavailable," said Stephen Gilderdale, head of the customer security program at SWIFT. "Daily Validation Reports will provide a reliable and independent source of information, providing such institutions with an activity lens to help them quickly detect fraud — whether perpetrated by external attackers or by malicious insiders."

Given the rise in cyberattacks wherein criminals pretend to be company executives, it’s possible other types of companies could employ use this kind of tool to validate requested funds transfers. In April, the FBI said it has seen a 270% increase in so-called CEO scams since January 2015.