Signs of Identity Fraud: How to Tell if Your Organization Is at Risk
Identity fraud isn’t just a consumer problem; it’s a growing threat to organizations of all sizes. From unauthorized financial transactions to fake accounts, the signs of identity fraud within a business can be subtle but deeply damaging if overlooked. Recognizing these red flags early is essential to protecting your company’s finances, reputation, and customer trust. In this article, we’ll explore the most common indicators that your organization may be at risk and what you can do about it.
So how do you know if your business should consider stepping up its identity verification efforts? Here are signs that you may be at greater risk and how Keesing Technologies can help.
What are the signs of identity fraud in an organization?
1. You’re Operating in a High-Risk Industry or Region
Industries like banking, fintech, crypto, travel, or gaming face frequent targeting by fraudsters. If you’re in one of these sectors or operating in regions with high rates of document fraud, your risk exposure is naturally higher.
✅ With Keesing: Whether you’re handling routine checks or complex, high-value onboarding, Keesing’s solutions support manual and automated identity verification (IDV) to match your risk level, whichever industry you are in. Read some of our use cases in different industries here.
2. You Frequently Receive Low-Quality Images of IDs
Many businesses rely on document images for identity verification, which is valid for compliance-focused use cases. However, a pattern of low-quality or blurry submissions can indicate attempted fraud. Fraudsters often use poor-quality images to hide signs of digital alterations or forgeries, making it harder to detect fraud. Accepting these images without proper verification can leave your onboarding process vulnerable and increase risk.
✅ With Keesing: Our advanced scanning technology and software work together to detect subtle security features that low-quality images often conceal. By inspecting embedded features and comparing each document with our database, this premium technology goes beyond basic mobile onboarding tools. It provides stronger protection against fraud by quickly identifying low-quality or forged documents before they cause problems.
3. Your Identity Checks Haven’t Evolved with Your Growth
Manual inspections are perfectly appropriate for many businesses, especially in low-risk environments. It can also serve as a powerful and valuable second line of defense, particularly for handling flagged or complex cases that require human judgment. As your company grows or oonboardsmore users, the risk of fraud naturally increases. However, as a first line of defense, especially in high-volume environments, there can be limitations – especially if checkers do not have trusted reference material to compare with and staff are not equipped with the knowledge and skills to verify IDs.
✅ With Keesing: Start with what you need and scale later. Our consultants will help you decide according to your risk levels. When the time comes and you need an upgrade on the current checks, Keesing can provide you with enhanced features to match your evolving needs. If you are choosing reference checking as a method, DocumentChecker provides you with HQ images and information on thousands of ID reference data, including their security features. Complement this powerful resource by empowering your staff with training from Keesing ID Academy.
4. Your Customer Base Is Global or Growing Internationally
Expanding into new regions brings different regulatory requirements and document standards. This greater variety can be challenging because formats, languages, and security features may vary widely. Without the right verification tools in place, you might struggle to verify documents from unfamiliar jurisdictions. If not handled properly, this can create opportunities for fraudsters to exploit gaps in your processes, especially targeting documents they suspect your team is less familiar with. Threat actors may intentionally target documents from regions where they believe your team lacks detailed expertise, assuming that such documents are more likely to slip through standard checks.
✅ With Keesing: Our global document database includes over 7,000 identity documents from across the world, so you can verify IDs globally with confidence, no matter where your customers are. Moreover, our in-house document experts continuously acquire and analyze new identity documents from around the world, ensuring the database and the system are regularly updated.
5. Your Verification Methods Are Outdated
Deepfakes, face morphing, and synthetic identities are rapidly evolving techniques used to bypass outdated ID verification systems. Many businesses remain unaware of their exposure until fraud has already occurred. Warning signs include unusually high volumes of applications originating from the same IP ranges or geographic clusters, inconsistent metadata across submitted images and repeated appearance of the same face tied to different names, documents, or identities, suggesting synthetic identity abuse or morphing attacks. As these threats become more common and sophisticated, ID verification companies must evolve their detection strategies to remain resilient.
✅ With Keesing: Our advanced ID verification solution, AuthentiScan, uses multiple technologies for security. Multispectral document scanning detects security features and tampering. To verify that modern IDs’ biometric data matches their physical cards, NFC chip reading is used. Finally, face verification verifies the ID holder’s identity by comparing their live image with the ID photo.
6. Your Business Experiences Frequent Account Takeovers
If customers are reporting unauthorized access to their accounts, it’s a clear sign that fraudsters are bypassing your current verification measures. This not only puts sensitive information at risk but also damages customer trust and increases pressure on your support team. In some cases, the lack of an effective re-verification process allows bad actors to maintain access unnoticed. (Read more about re-verification).
✅ With Keesing: Our identity verification solution adds strong layers of protection with biometric verification and real-time ID checks, making it significantly harder for unauthorized users to gain access, even if credentials have been compromised.
7. Customer Support Is Handling More ID-Related Complaints
A growing volume of identity verification complaints often signals underlying weaknesses in your verification process. Fraud attempts can increase scrutiny, leading to longer processing times and more frequent requests for additional documents. This results in a heavier workload for your customer support team, taking time and diverting resources from other priorities.
✅ With Keesing: Our solution streamlines identity verification by quickly detecting fraudulent or altered documents. In addition, our in-house Expert Service Desk is professionally trained by certified document experts to thoroughly check the authenticity of IDs. This combined approach lightens the load on your support team while providing a smoother, faster experience for genuine customers.
Final Thoughts
If you’re noticing signs of identity fraud, facing new risks, growing fast, or facing stricter regulations, now might be the time to evaluate and scale your IDV strategy. At Keesing Technologies, we support thousands of organizations to verify ID documents and banknotes.
Identity fraud risk is not one-size-fits-all. Some businesses face higher threats and regulatory pressures than others. At Keesing Technologies, we support companies across the full spectrum – from those needing basic compliance checks (like MRZ validation) to those requiring advanced, multi-spectral document scanning capabilities with biometrics or those requiring a dataset of secure documents for forensic machines.
Would you like to know how Keesing’s solutions can help you strengthen identity verification, detect fraud more effectively, and stay compliant – no matter what industry you operate in? Email us at sales@keesingtechnologies.com or click the button below.
