THE CONNECTED DEFENSE

How Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies can help elevate the fight against financial crimes

- J Donald Fancher, Tim Erridge, Michael Shepard And Rob Wainwright

At the height of the Roman Empire, 250,000 miles of road connected two million square miles of land. The connectivity spurred innovation to levels never witnessed before in history. The network of roads made it possible for engineers to be deployed across the empire to transform rural landscapes into new cities and towns; it also made it possible to recruit and deploy more than 450,000 soldiers across the empire.

However, over the centuries, the same innovation and technology that led to the rise of the Roman Empire contributed to its downfall. Increased trade turned relatively low-threat barbarian tribes into wealthier existential threats to Rome, as they were now equipped with modern weaponry and improved agricultural tools. Simultaneously, the sheer size of the empire gave way to the formation of dozens of smaller provinces. By 476 CE, the now-sophisticated tribes completely outmatched the disparate and lesscoordinated provinces — leading to the sacking of Rome and the toppling of one of the greatest empires in history.

Today, akin to the early road design and construction of Rome, Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing connect us in ways we had never imagined. This has led to an unprecedented level of business innovation and advanced technical solutions while also creating a converging landscape of cyber, financial crime, and money laundering risks. These blurred lines have, in turn, given birth to new and more innovative forms of financial crime — forms that are sophisticated in their approach and agnostic to industry and geography.