About Paul Fabara
In a March 2023 interview with Forbes Middle East, Paul Fabara, then Visa's Chief Risk Officer, discussed the evolving fraud landscape in the post-pandemic economy. Fabara stated that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital commerce, which he said created "a tremendous opportunity for bad actors to attack" consumers in a more sophisticated manner. He described past attacks as "single task" efforts to monetize credentials, while current attacks are "a lot more coordinated" and "multi‑science," targeting victims on cyber, fraud, and anti-money laundering fronts simultaneously. Fabara noted that many businesses that built digital presences during the pandemic were not fully protected against cyber threats, which he said "became big business for bad actors."
Fabara outlined Visa's response, saying the company worked with clients to provide products and services to protect against cyber, fraud, and AML threats. He stated that Visa had spent "well over ten billion dollars over the past five years" on security, guided by five principles: best-in-class logical access controls, securing internet-facing assets, complying with local regulations, protecting data, and maintaining consumer protection programs. Fabara emphasized the need for continued investment in defenses, citing the entry of new players such as fintechs, neobanks, and crypto.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Paul Fabara's recent appearances.
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Transcript (9 segments)
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Paul Fabara0:11
The main challenges now so the pandemic accelerated dramatically the rate of adoption of digital credentials. In other words, consumers that normally would have gone into the corner store or brick and mortar had to quickly adjust to digital commerce, and that created a tremendous opportunity for bad actors to attack them in a very sophisticated way. In the past, the majority of the attacks that existed in the ecosystem were a single task. In other words, they were looking for credentials they can monetize, PII, personal private information that could monetize in the marketplace. Today, those attacks are a lot more...
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Interviewer1:11
Post-pandemic, what are the most pressing and fastest emerging threats in the post-pandemic era?
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Paul Fabara1:18
I would say mainly related to cyber. What happened over the pandemic is that many businesses that essentially didn't have digital presence had to build that digital presence. And the payments ecosystem, in this case companies that didn't have the digital commerce engines, had to build those. And unfortunately, not all of them were protected in terms of cyber security threats, and that became big business for bad actors penetrating their defenses, getting into their customer bases, and of course trying to steal and monetize those credentials.
Hopefully they are protected from a cyber perspective. On the cyber side, it would be to make sure the logical access controls are galvanized, to make sure that their APIs are fully protected, that their data is devalued. What I mean by devalued is that it's not all stuck in the same place, so it's more difficult for crooks to take advantage of that. The second component is on the traditional fraud, to make sure that we educate consumers in terms of their responsibility. They don't want to be the weakest link, and we want to make sure that we educate consumers in terms of their responsibilities and what they need to do to protect their credentials, to protect their data. Part of that is we have many of those offerings, so we work directly with our clients to make sure that we protect the ecosystem and to ensure the buyers and sellers can...
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Interviewer3:10
The payments ecosystem is getting more complicated with the entrance of new players, fintechs, neobanks, and so on, with the inception of crypto. We need to make sure that we continue to invest in our capabilities and our defenses to ensure that we have a safe and secure payments ecosystem. How would you say that security has...
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Paul Fabara3:34
First of all, we have spent well over 10 billion dollars over the past five years to galvanize all of our lines. There are five principles that we've been really driven in terms of making sure that we become best in class. First, let's make sure that our logical access controls are best in class. Second...
And then lastly, just as important, to make sure that at the end of the day we have good programs to be able to protect our consumers across the world.
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Interviewer4:18
Fantastic, thanks so much for joining us today.
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Paul Fabara4:20
Thank you so much for having me.
