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World desk5 min

How Banks Use AI to Detect Cyberattacks and Fraud

Banks use AI and related analytics to flag unusual transactions, identity signals, and security activity for review. Here’s how detection fits into broader fraud and cybersecurity controls.
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Banks use AI and related analytics to flag unusual transactions, account behavior, identity signals, and security activity for verification or investigation. These tools can help defenders spot patterns, but they are one part of a wider security process—not an automatic verdict or a guarantee that fraud will be caught. Attackers also use AI to make phishing more convincing, clone voices, and develop malware.

What AI can flag in banking activity

Fraud monitoring is not limited to matching a transaction against a list of known scams. Analytics can look for activity that departs from a customer’s usual behavior or otherwise appears unusual. Interagency authentication guidance identifies examples such as changes in user behavior, transaction velocity, login activity, and account lockouts. A signal may lead to an alert or review; banks do not all use the same models, data, or procedures. Federal Reserve interagency authentication guidance

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Transactions and account behavior

Depending on the bank’s controls, monitoring may flag an unusual amount, recipient, transaction pace, or pattern of account use. The purpose is to surface activity for a closer look—not to have a model declare with certainty that a payment is fraudulent. If an alert is raised, the bank may seek additional verification, review the activity, or investigate under its own policies. Federal Reserve Governor Michael S. Barr’s April 17, 2025 speech

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Identity and impersonation signals

Identity checks may combine signals rather than rely on a single cue. In his April 17, 2025 speech, Barr described facial recognition, voice analysis, and behavioral biometrics as possible AI-powered advances in identity verification. He also discussed analyzing media metadata to identify suspicious audio or video for further checks. These are techniques he described, not evidence that every bank uses them.

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Logins and security events

Login patterns, access activity, and other security telemetry can help identify suspicious behavior around an account or system. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) says AI/ML platforms can be used to analyze large datasets for fraud detection or security-event monitoring. Its report establishes these as potential use cases, not as a standard deployment across banks. OCC’s 2024 Cybersecurity and Financial System Resilience Report

How an alert can fit into a bank’s response

A useful way to understand detection is as a chain of decisions. Analytics surface a risk signal; the bank then decides what action fits its policies and the circumstances. The exact response varies by institution, and the official materials do not establish one universal workflow.

  1. Monitor activity: Analytics examine transaction, identity, login, or security-event signals for patterns that warrant attention.
  2. Assess the alert: The bank may seek more information or compare the activity with other available signals rather than treating an alert as proof of fraud.
  3. Take a proportionate action: Depending on the case and bank policy, this could involve additional authentication, human review, delaying or holding a payment, or investigation.
  4. Escalate or resolve: The bank determines what to do next based on its review. The sources describe monitoring and review practices but do not prescribe a single outcome for every alert.

This matters because an unusual transaction can be legitimate, while a carefully disguised scam may not look unusual at first. Detection systems support judgment and controls; they do not replace them.

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Why fraud detection and cybersecurity overlap

A cyberattack can become payment fraud when a criminal persuades a customer or employee to disclose credentials or authorize a transfer. Phishing and impersonation target people; access and security monitoring address other parts of the threat. Banks therefore need controls that span both account activity and the systems used to access financial services.

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The OCC’s July 2024 report warns that attackers use AI to amplify phishing, including through deepfake voice cloning, and to develop malware. Barr has described banks as frontline defenders because they are directly involved in financial transactions and customer data. That does not mean banks can identify every deepfake from a recording alone: his speech discusses combining identity signals and further verification as threats evolve. Barr’s speech on deepfakes and bank cybersecurity

AI systems have risks of their own

Detection models and the data they depend on also need protection. NIST’s 2024 taxonomy provides terms for several categories of adversarial machine-learning risk:

  • Evasion: An attacker tries to make malicious activity harder for a model to recognize.
  • Poisoning: An attacker seeks to corrupt data used to train or operate a model.
  • Privacy attacks: An attacker tries to infer or expose sensitive information through a model or its data.
  • Misuse: A system or capability is used in an unintended or harmful way.

NIST’s taxonomy is a general technical framework, not evidence that any named bank has experienced each type of attack. It helps explain why banks must consider the integrity of models, inputs, and data—not just the alerts those models produce. NIST, Adversarial Machine Learning: A Taxonomy and Terminology of Attacks and Mitigations

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Traditional AI and generative AI are not the same use case

Traditional AI and machine learning are already used in areas such as fraud detection, according to Barr’s April 4, 2025 speech. Generative AI offers different possibilities, including broader data analysis, but Barr said banks appeared cautious about adopting it. He identified risks such as fabricated outputs, inconsistent responses, exposure of sensitive information, and security concerns when an AI agent can access customer data or authorize transactions. A model that flags a payment and an agent empowered to act on a customer’s account have different capabilities and risk profiles. Barr’s April 4, 2025 speech on AI and banking

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How banks manage model risk

The OCC’s revised 2026 model risk guidance discusses model development and use, testing, validation, ongoing monitoring, governance and controls, and third-party products. It says practices should be tailored to an institution’s size, complexity, and model risk profile. The guidance is non-prescriptive; it is not a specific AI law, and its scope excludes generative and agentic AI. Its relevance is greatest for larger institutions or those with greater exposure to model risk. OCC’s revised model risk management guidance

When assessing a bank’s approach, the useful questions are whether its controls address the signals it monitors, what happens after an alert, how models and vendor products are tested and overseen, and how the institution protects against attacks on models and their inputs. A system’s presence alone does not establish that it is effective.

What is known about effectiveness

The official materials cited here do not provide comparable bank-by-bank figures for AI detection accuracy, false positives, or fraud-loss reductions. They support describing the techniques and governance concerns, but not claiming a particular percentage improvement or universal success rate. A fair comparison would need consistent, well-sourced performance measures and enough detail about the systems and conditions being compared.

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