Navigating the Perfect Storm of Fraud and Scams: Outseer's Purpose-Built Defence

John Filby, CEO Outseer

We are living in a new kind of digital fraud landscape. One where the attack surface is not just technical – it’s also emotional. 

This is one of the most significant shifts that Outseer has witnessed in its more than 20 year history at the forefront of fraud prevention.

We are in a perfect storm of fraud and scams. The rewards are high, the tools are easily available, and the use of AI has made attacks faster and more convincing than ever. Criminal networks are mature, coordinated, and increasingly professionalised.

Scams have transformed the digital fraud landscape

Through our work with financial institutions in more than 50 countries, Outseer has witnessed how manipulation has become industrialised. The primary vulnerability is no longer the system but the person using it.

But traditional methods to commit digital fraud have not gone anywhere. Outseer continues to protect over $5 trillion in transactions each year, helping to stop identity fraud, safeguard accounts and monitor all forms of payment.

Together, this creates a new, combined threat perimeter, where authorised and unauthorised fraud now overlap.

What is the compound attack surface?

Outseer defines this expanded perimeter as the “compound attack surface”, where both technology and human behaviour are exploited by fraudsters:

• The technical attack surface covers threats such as stolen credentials, malware, account takeovers and payment fraud
• The emotional attack surface covers human manipulation including romance scams, investment fraud and money-mule recruitment 

Authorised fraud doesn’t replace unauthorised fraud, it magnifies it. Together, they create a dynamic, expanding threat surface that grows faster than banks can defend against it.

Why is this so challenging for financial institutions?

FIs and fraudsters operate in completely different worlds. Outseer’s vantage point across both threat monitoring and fraud prevention operations reveals a clear imbalance. Fraudsters can adapt freely with no regard for the law, while financial institutions must innovate carefully, and within strict regulatory frameworks. This disparity keeps attackers several steps ahead.

For criminals, fraud is the business. They spend all their time and energy on refining tactics, sharing playbooks across dark web forums, testing new tools and learning from each failure. Every mistake is cheap; every success is lucrative.

For FIs, fraud management is one function among many. It competes for budget, headcount and attention within heavily regulated organisations. Teams must navigate strict frameworks – PSD2, GDPR, AML, KYC, SCA – all designed to protect customers, but which also limit agility. Systems are often aging, disconnected and regionalised, and co-ordination between fraud, risk, compliance and technology teams can be challenging.

The complexity of banks’ systems means that even as they strengthen individual defences, they can miss how different risk checks interact. Stopping one type of fraud isn’t enough. The goal now is to understand how all risks overlap, and how decisions in one area influence exposure in another.

Outseer helps financial institutions see across those layers of risk, by connecting signals that are often fragmented between systems and teams. We help close the visibility gap that fraudsters exploit.

What is at stake?

The consequences extend far beyond financial loss for FIs. Every successful scam chips away at customer confidence and erodes trust in digital banking. Stolen dollars fuel organised crime, strengthening networks that thrive on exploitation and human trafficking. For victims, the impact is deeply personal – confusion, fear and financial insecurity that can upend lives.

At Outseer, this is what fuels us. We are in a fight to preserve trust, protect dignity and stop criminal enterprises from profiting at the expense of real people.

Our approach centres on all-cause fraud prevention: addressing the full spectrum of authorised and unauthorised threats through a single, integrated framework.

We take a defence-in-depth approach that begins with real-time signals such as behavioural biometrics, detecting subtle signs of coercion or compromise before money moves.

At the core is Outseer’s risk engine, powered by predictive AI and decades of learning from real fraud cases. It unites digital and human signals into one model for faster, more confident outcomes.

Every component works together through native integration, producing transparent risk scores that give institutions confidence in every decision.

The payoff: all-cause fraud prevention

At Outseer, our innovations are designed to deliver what matters most in fraud prevention: accuracy in every decision. This means lower fraud losses, reduced customer friction, higher revenue and streamlined operations.

We help FIs protect the entire compound attack surface, technical and emotional, through a single, intelligent platform. This unified approach closes the agility gap attackers exploit.

To learn more, visit www.outseer.com/