In the US alone, consumers reported losing $8.8 billion in fraud schemes, a 30% increase from the year before. That’s the tip of the wider fraudulent iceberg, with fraud targeting the financial sector other industries incurring billions more in losses.

The trend is a global one, with nearly every survey and study finding a steady uptick in fraud in the past several years. The drivers behind this fraud surge are complex and varied, but one common factor is the ease with which bad actors can steal identities or create new ones.

As firms increasingly struggle to determine who is who, identity verification is becoming the critical connective tissue between businesses and consumers everywhere. It’s becoming table stakes in almost every industry, from financial services to employment to gaming and many others.

In this two-part series exploring the global identity crisis and the ID verification landscape, ACFCS speaks with Shane Oren, the Chief Revenue Officer with OCR Labs. Shane starts with a brief but fascinating history of identity and the various ways we’ve used to validate it over time, under the premise that you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.

We then explore real-world examples of identity verification gone wrong, and its consequences for financial institutions, before leaving off with a look at key current risk areas and challenges, including malicious use of generative AI.