British lender NatWest has successfully tested Israeli startup BioCatch’s behavioral biometrics technology to validate visitors to websites and to secure online transactions.
NatWest deployed BioCatch technology since the beginning of the year within its private banking arm Coutts and for some of its business customers, successfully preventing online fraud attempts, BioCatch said in a statement.
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The bank will pilot the technology with its personal banking customers later in 2017.
BioCatch said that its system captures more than 500 points of behaviour such as hand-eye coordination, pressure, hand tremors, navigation, scrolling and other finger movements amongst other things to create a unique user profile.
Via continuous authentication, it is also able to recognise anomalies in behaviours from the point of login and throughout the entire session, the Israeli company claims.
NatWest chief administrative officer Simon McNamara said: “The technology that we’ve been able to deploy with the help of BioCatch has played a crucial role in strengthening our security systems. The breadth of behavioural biometrics that BioCatch technology can monitor is really impressive and we’ve already seen many examples of it alerting us to suspicious activity and protecting our customers from fraud.”
BioCatch CEO Eyal Goldwerger said: “With 48 percent of data security breaches across the financial services industry involving compromised web applications, the importance of validating a user not only at login but throughout a session as a way to prevent fraud, has taken on increasing urgency. At the same time, today’s leading banks, such as NatWest, are also extremely mindful that injecting additional security measures must be balanced with maintaining a seamless customer experience, whether online or mobile.”
