Fraud detection in the banking sector : a multi-agent approach

Fraud is an increasing phenomenon as shown in many surveys carried out by leading international consulting companies in the last years. Despite the evolution of electronic payments and hacking techniques there is still a strong human component in fraud schemes. Conflict of interest in particular is the main contributing factor to the success of internal fraud. In such cases anomaly detection tools are not always the best instruments, since the fraud schemes are based on faking documents in a context dominated by lack of controls, and the perpetrators are those ones who should control possible irregularities. In the banking sector audit team experts can count only on their experience, whistle blowing and the reports sent by their inspectors. The Fraud Interactive Decision Expert System (FIDES), which is the core of this research, is a multi-agent system built to support auditors in evaluating suspicious behaviours and to speed up the evaluation process in order to detect or prevent fraud schemes. The system combines Think-map, Delphi method and Attack trees and it has been built around audit team experts and their needs. The output of FIDES is an attack tree, a tree-based diagram to ”systematically categorize the different ways in which a system can be attacked”. Once the attack tree is built, auditors can choose the path they perceive as more suitable and decide whether or not to start the investigation. The system is meant for use in the future to retrieve old cases in order to match them with new ones and find similarities. The retrieving features of the system will be useful to simplify the risk management phase, since similar countermeasures adopted for past cases might be useful for present ones. Even though FIDES has been built with the banking sector in mind, it can be applied in all those organisations, like insurance companies or public organizations, where anti-fraud activity is based on a central anti-fraud unit and a reporting system

DAG-Based Attack and Defense Modeling: Don't Miss the Forest for the Attack Trees

This paper presents the current state of the art on attack and defense modeling approaches that are based on directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). DAGs allow for a hierarchical decomposition of complex scenarios into simple, easily understandable and quantifiable actions. Methods based on threat trees and Bayesian networks are two well-known approaches to security modeling. However there exist more than 30 DAG-based methodologies, each having different features and goals. The objective of this survey is to present a complete overview of graphical attack and defense modeling techniques based on DAGs. This consists of summarizing the existing methodologies, comparing their features and proposing a taxonomy of the described formalisms. This article also supports the selection of an adequate modeling technique depending on user requirements

Cyber-Physical Threat Intelligence for Critical Infrastructures Security

Modern critical infrastructures comprise of many interconnected cyber and physical assets, and as such are large scale cyber-physical systems. Hence, the conventional approach of securing these infrastructures by addressing cyber security and physical security separately is no longer effective. Rather more integrated approaches that address the security of cyber and physical assets at the same time are required. This book presents integrated (i.e. cyber and physical) security approaches and technologies for the critical infrastructures that underpin our societies. Specifically, it introduces advanced techniques for threat detection, risk assessment and security information sharing, based on leading edge technologies like machine learning, security knowledge modelling, IoT security and distributed ledger infrastructures. Likewise, it presets how established security technologies like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), pen-testing, vulnerability assessment and security data analytics can be used in the context of integrated Critical Infrastructure Protection. The novel methods and techniques of the book are exemplified in case studies involving critical infrastructures in four industrial sectors, namely finance, healthcare, energy and communications. The peculiarities of critical infrastructure protection in each one of these sectors is discussed and addressed based on sector-specific solutions. The advent of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) is expected to increase the cyber-physical nature of critical infrastructures as well as their interconnection in the scope of sectorial and cross-sector value chains. Therefore, the demand for solutions that foster the interplay between cyber and physical security, and enable Cyber-Physical Threat Intelligence is likely to explode. In this book, we have shed light on the structure of such integrated security systems, as well as on the technologies that will underpin their operation. We hope that Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection stakeholders will find the book useful when planning their future security strategies

Women in Artificial intelligence (AI)

This Special Issue, entitled "Women in Artificial Intelligence" includes 17 papers from leading women scientists. The papers cover a broad scope of research areas within Artificial Intelligence, including machine learning, perception, reasoning or planning, among others. The papers have applications to relevant fields, such as human health, finance, or education. It is worth noting that the Issue includes three papers that deal with different aspects of gender bias in Artificial Intelligence. All the papers have a woman as the first author. We can proudly say that these women are from countries worldwide, such as France, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Australia, Bangladesh, Yemen, Romania, India, Cuba, Bangladesh and Spain. In conclusion, apart from its intrinsic scientific value as a Special Issue, combining interesting research works, this Special Issue intends to increase the invisibility of women in AI, showing where they are, what they do, and how they contribute to developments in Artificial Intelligence from their different places, positions, research branches and application fields. We planned to issue this book on the on Ada Lovelace Day (11/10/2022), a date internationally dedicated to the first computer programmer, a woman who had to fight the gender difficulties of her times, in the XIX century. We also thank the publisher for making this possible, thus allowing for this book to become a part of the international activities dedicated to celebrating the value of women in ICT all over the world. With this book, we want to pay homage to all the women that contributed over the years to the field of AI

Proceedings of the Seventh Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education

International audienceThis volume contains the Proceedings of the Seventh Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (ERME), which took place 9-13 February 2011, at Rzeszñw in Poland