AI is becoming a powerful tool for bank fraud.

According to the Deputy Minister of Public Security, fraud through the banking system is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Meanwhile, commercial banks also acknowledge that AI is a double-edged sword, helping banks increase operational efficiency but also becoming a powerful tool for fraud.

Deputy Minister Pham The Tung stated that in Vietnam, the digital transformation of the finance and banking sector is taking place at a very rapid pace, opening up many opportunities for breakthrough growth.

However, in the era of AI (artificial intelligence), the issue of trust is facing entirely new challenges. While previously risks primarily lay in the technology system, now risks have shifted significantly to the human element, directly affecting users. Fraudulent methods are becoming increasingly sophisticated and organized, and the support of AI technology has created false trusts that are very difficult to distinguish. This necessitates a change in approach to ensuring digital financial security, shifting from passive defense to proactive trust-building.

"A safe financial system is not just a system without risk, but a system where users are truly protected, equipped with the capacity to clearly identify risks, and receive timely support when incidents occur," the Deputy Minister affirmed.

According to the Ministry of Public Security , digital trust cannot be built by a single agency. It is a comprehensive effort requiring close coordination among state management agencies, financial institutions, technology companies, and society as a whole; most importantly, it requires raising public awareness and skills, because in many cases, people are the weakest link but also the first line of defense of the entire system.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) also affirmed that while digital banking has developed rapidly in recent years, the need to ensure safety, security, and user protection has become even more urgent. In the AI ​​era, technological innovation is happening very quickly, but the trust of the people and businesses must be built sustainably, consistently, and responsibly.

According to Deputy Governor Pham Tien Dung, AI is opening up huge opportunities for the banking industry. AI helps improve operational efficiency, automate processes, personalize services, credit scoring, customer care, detect unusual transactions, prevent fraud, and combat money laundering.

But AI also gives rise to new risks such as deepfakes, personalized fraud, identity spoofing, algorithmic bias, "black box" models, third-party reliance, and the risk of automating decisions that have a significant impact on customers but lack proper oversight.

Particularly in the banking sector, risks lie not only in the technology system but also in user behavior, personal data, transaction flows, connecting platforms, and the potential for criminals to exploit people's trust to commit fraud and deception.

“This places a very clear demand: we cannot just protect the system, but must protect the users as well; we cannot just defend at the level of individual organizations, but must form a common shield for the entire ecosystem; we cannot just deal with risks after they occur, but must shift to early detection, early warning, early prevention, and coordinated rapid response,” the Deputy Governor suggested.

From the perspective of a commercial bank, Mr. Nguyen Hung, General Director of TPBank, also affirmed that AI is a key to the bank's survival. For example, TPBank currently handles about 5-7 million transactions per day. That's thousands of transactions every minute. Using AI not only helps the bank increase productivity and reduce costs but also to establish risk alerts and filter suspicious transactions. However, AI is also a double-edged sword.

The CEO of TPBank warned that AI is becoming a powerful tool for criminals. Super AIs like WormGPT are capable of automatically scanning for zero-day vulnerabilities in financial systems at a speed that many human security experts would struggle to match.

With the help of AI, fraud has now formed large corporations. Through data analysis, banks have found that most fraudulent funds, once deposited into an account, are transferred within 40-45 seconds. In just a few minutes, the money has flowed through dozens of banks, then transformed into digital currency or withdrawn as cash.

Because fraudulent funds are quickly dispersed, the current coordination mechanism between banks and the police makes it very difficult to prevent the money from disappearing. In a recent meeting with the Vietnam Banking Association (VNBA), Colonel Hoang Ngoc Bach, Head of Department 4 of the Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention and Control Bureau (A05) of the Ministry of Public Security, pointed out a worrying situation: fraudulent funds can be "dispersed" through multiple layers of accounts within hours, while the current information exchange process between the banking sector and the police is slow, potentially taking days to months.

Due to the lack of real-time coordination mechanisms, the absence of tools to intervene at the "golden moment" when victims first discover they have been scammed, and the limited capacity to trace the flow of money, preventing fraudulent funds is very difficult.

Colonel Hoang Ngoc Bach proposed shifting from an administrative coordination model to a "digital warfare" model, based on the principle of "prevention first – verification later," with the goal of establishing a 24/7 operational mechanism. The VNeID platform could be integrated as a channel for receiving denunciations and transmitting data directly to police agencies, combined with the VNBA Handbook to form an interconnected, closed-loop processing procedure.

Source: https://baodautu.vn/ai-dang-la-tro-thu-dac-luc-cho-lua-dao-ngan-hang-d594999.html