Latest news with #HeatherAdkins
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Business Standard
2 hours ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Google unveils Safety Charter to boost user security and prevent fraud
Google India on Tuesday announced the launch of a Safety Charter, a broad framework aimed at improving user safety online by blending artificial intelligence into cybersecurity. The Safety Charter, the company said, would focus on three aspects — protecting users from online fraud, strengthening enterprise and government cybersecurity, and embedding responsible AI into platform design and deployment. 'Building AI responsibly, an AI that works safely and ethically, is the goal,' said Heather Adkins, Vice President of Security Engineering and the Cybersecurity Resilience Officer at Google. 'Cybersecurity is not just about the elimination of malpractices and other scams, but also about enabling trust within users, to try and use cyberspace with safety in mind,' said Preeti Lobana, Vice President and Country Manager at Google India. This new Charter builds on DigiKavach, an India-first initiative launched in October 2023. Focused on real-time fraud detection, DigiKavach partnered with agencies like the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Sector (I4C) and civil society groups including CyberPeace Foundation and FACT to protect users from digital financial scams. In just one year, DigiKavach and Google's AI-led systems blocked over ₹13,000 crore in fraud attempts, flagged 20 times more scam domains and prevented 60 million high-risk app installs across 13 million devices, the company said in a presentation during the launch of the Safety Charter. Google Messages intercepted over 500 million scam texts monthly. The programme reached 177 million people through scam alerts and safety content in multiple languages, Google said.
Indian Express
7 hours ago
- Business
- Indian Express
Google strengthens AI-powered fraud detection and security efforts in India
Google on Tuesday, June 17, unveiled its Safety Charter in India, aiming to strengthen its efforts in AI-led fraud detection and combat the rise in digital scams across the country. In India, which is seen as a digital-first nation, fraud related to UPI grew 85 per cent year-over-year to nearly $11 billion last year. In response to increasing incidents of digital arrests and frauds—where scammers impersonate officials to extort money via video calls and fraudulent loan apps—Google is addressing these threats through the new Charter. 'India's digital journey continues to unlock incredible opportunities, but alongside that, we've also seen a rise in the sophistication and aggression of the threat landscape,' said Heather Adkins, Vice President of Engineering, Google Security, addressing a packed audience comprising media ecosystem partners, and government representatives. 'If the threats are moving at machine speed, we must react at machine speed as well.' Adkins explained that Google's Safety Charter is built on three fundamental pillars: protecting end users from online fraud, ensuring cybersecurity for governments and organizations at the enterprise level and building AI in a responsible and ethical way. During the summit, the company announced that Google Pay, one of the leading UPI-based payment apps in India, issued 41 million warnings against transactions suspected to be potential scams. Google Messages, which comes preinstalled on many Android smartphones, uses AI-powered Scam Detection, helping protect users from over 500 million suspicious messages each month. Meanwhile, Google piloted its Play Protect programme in India last year, claiming it has blocked nearly 60 million attempts to install high-risk apps. This effort has prevented the installation of over 220,000 unique malicious apps across more than 13 million devices. Adkins, a founding member of Google's security team who has been with the company for over 23 years, also highlighted how Google is leveraging artificial intelligence to detect threats. 'This is where AI comes into the fight—where humans might take days or weeks to detect a threat, we've been able to deploy Gemini to detect it in a fraction of the time,' she said. 'This isn't just about fixing the problem; it's about reacting quickly.' 'Using Gemini, we have improved threat identification by 300 percent,' she continued. 'It's like a super-fast detective, sifting through layers of information to find the needle in the haystack that unlocks a deeper understanding of the threat.' Google has partnered with the Ministry of Home Affairs' Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to raise awareness about cybercrimes, the company said in a blog post. This collaboration builds on Google's existing efforts, including the launch of its online fraud identification program, DigiKavach, which debuted in 2023 to curb the harmful effects of malicious financial apps and predatory loan apps. Anuj Bhatia is a personal technology writer at who has been covering smartphones, personal computers, gaming, apps, and lifestyle tech actively since 2011. He specialises in writing longer-form feature articles and explainers on trending tech topics. His unique interests encompass delving into vintage tech, retro gaming and composing in-depth narratives on the intersection of history, technology, and popular culture. He covers major international tech conferences and product launches from the world's biggest and most valuable tech brands including Apple, Google and others. At the same time, he also extensively covers indie, home-grown tech startups. Prior to joining The Indian Express in late 2016, he served as a senior tech writer at My Mobile magazine and previously held roles as a reviewer and tech writer at Gizbot. Anuj holds a postgraduate degree from Banaras Hindu University. You can find Anuj on Linkedin. Email: ... Read More
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Google to scale up AI-powered fraud detection and security operations in India
Google has unveiled its Safety Charter in India, which will expand its AI-led developments for fraud detection and combating scams across the country, the company's largest market outside the United States. Digital fraud in India is rising. Fraud related to the Indian government's instant payment system UPI grew 85% year-over-year to nearly 11 billion Indian rupees ($127 million) last year, per the government's data. India also saw several instances of digital arrest scams, where fraudsters pose as officials to extort money via video calls and predatory loan apps. With its Safety Charter, Google aims to address some of these areas. The company has also launched its security engineering center in India, its fourth center after Dublin, Munich, and Malaga. Announced at the Google for India summit last year, the security engineering center (GSec) will allow Google to partner with the local community, including government, academia and students, and small and medium enterprises to create solutions to solve cybersecurity, privacy, safety, and AI problems, said Google VP of security engineering Heather Adkins in an interview with TechCrunch. Google has partnered with the Ministry of Home Affairs' Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to raise awareness of cybercrimes, the company said in a blog post. This builds upon the company's existing work, including the launch of its online fraud identification program, DigiKavach, which debuted in 2023 to restrict the harmful effects of malicious financial apps and predatory loan apps. With its GSec in India, Google will focus on three key areas, Adkins told TechCrunch: the phenomenon of online scams and fraud and how people are safe online; the cybersecurity of enterprises, government, and critical infrastructure; and building responsible AI. 'These three areas will become part of our safety charter for India, and over the coming years… we want to use the fact that we have engineering capability here to solve for what's happening in India, close to where the users are,' said Adkins. Globally, Google is utilizing AI to combat online scams and remove millions of ads and ad accounts. The company aims to deploy AI more extensively in India to combat digital fraud. Google Messages, which comes preinstalled on many Android devices, uses AI-powered Scam Detection that has helped protect users from over 500 million suspicious messages a month. Similarly, Google piloted its Play Protect in India last year, which it claims has blocked nearly 60 million attempts to install high-risk apps, resulting in the stopping of more than 220,000 unique apps on over 13 million devices. Google Pay, which is one of the top UPI-based payment apps in the country, also displayed 41 million warnings against transactions suspected to be potential scams. — Adkins, a founding member of Google's security team who has been part of the internet company for over 23 years, discussed several other topics during an interview with TechCrunch: Adkins said one thing top of mind is the use and misuse of AI by malicious actors. 'We're obviously tracking AI very closely, and up until now, we've mostly seen the large language models like Gemini used as productivity enhancements. For example, to make phishing scams a bit more effective — especially if the actor and the target have different languages — they can use the benefit of translation to make the scams more believable using deepfakes, images, video, etc.,' said Adkins. Adkins said Google is conducting extensive testing of its AI models to ensure they understand what they should not do. 'This is important for generated content that might be harmful, but also actions that it might take,' said Akins. Google is working on frameworks, including the Secure AI Framework, to restrict the abuse of its Gemini models. However, to protect generative AI from being misused and abused by hackers in the future, the company sees the need for a framework to build safety for how multiple agents communicate. 'The industry is moving very, very quickly [by] putting protocols out. It's almost like the early days of the internet, where everybody's releasing code in real time, and we're thinking about safety after the fact,' said Adkins. Google does not want to introduce merely its own frameworks to limit the scope of generative AI being abused by hackers. Instead, Adkins said the company is working with the research community and developers. 'One of the things you don't want to do is constrain yourself too much in the early research days,' said Adkins. Alongside generative AI's potential for abuse by hackers, Adkins sees commercial surveillance vendors as a significant threat. These can include spyware makers, including NSO Group, which is infamous for its Pegasus spyware, or other small enterprises selling surveillance tools. 'These are companies spun up all over the world, and they develop and make and sell a platform for hacking,' said Adkins. 'You might pay $20, you might pay $200,000, just depending on the sophistication of the platform, and it allows you to scale attacking people without any expertise on your own.' Some of these vendors also sell their tools to spy on people in markets, including India. However, apart from being targeted by surveillance tools, the country has its own unique challenges in part for its size. The country sees not only AI-led deepfakes and voice cloning frauds, but also instances of digital arrests, which Adkins underlines are just regular scams adapted for the digital world. 'You can see how quickly the threat actors themselves are advancing… I love studying cyber in this region because of that. It's often a hint of what we're going to see worldwide at some point,' said Adkins. Google has long encouraged its users to use more secure authentication methods beyond passwords to protect their online presence. The company switched on multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all user accounts in the past, and also promotes hardware-based security keys, which Adkins mentioned by pointing to its employees actively using their laptops. Passwordless is also becoming a popular tech term, with various meanings. Nonetheless, expecting people to abandon passwords in a market like India is hard due to its vast demographics and diverse economic landscape. 'We knew for a very long time that passwords were not secure. This concept of a multi-factor authentication was a step forward,' said Adkins, adding that Indians likely favor SMS-based authentication over other MFA options. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Time of India
10 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Google releases 'safety charter' for India, senior exec details top cyber threat actors in the country
On digital privacy laws emerging around the world, including India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, Adkins said the company advocates for standardisation and principles-based approach to enable a seamless experience as they adapt across countries, while factoring in local needs and innovation. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads India has a unique lens on how technology is being used today, given the scale of the country, the speed at which people are coming online, and the vibrancy of the business community, said Heather Adkins , VP security engineering, Google . Threat actors responding to this ecosystem also provides a useful view of the evolving threat landscape, she said, adding that patterns seen in India may be translated in other parts of the on Tuesday released a 'safety charter' for India to address online scams and fraud, cybersecurity for government and businesses, and responsible artificial intelligence. The company is looking to deepen partnerships with the government, local organisations, and academia in these areas, said under the safety charter will be executed through the Google Security Engineering Centre being set up in a hub-and-spoke model across Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, she told engagements help to understand patterns better and protect people globally, Adkins said.'What we might learn about a pattern in India will then be automatically translated to a user somewhere else in the world, which is very beneficial for us,' she said, 'and because of India's scale, you have so many people online, that gives us a lens that's very unique in the world in terms of what we can see.'Fraudulent loan apps and 'digital arrest' scams, for instance, were seen emerging in the digital privacy laws emerging around the world, including India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, Adkins said the company advocates for standardisation and principles-based approach to enable a seamless experience as they adapt across countries, while factoring in local needs and innovation.'Regulation works well when it addresses the problem and gets it solved, and so what we don't want to see is regulation that makes the other problems worse,' she the question of heightened threats during conflicts like the recent India-Pakistan tensions, Adkins said cybersecurity is now a bigger factor in conflicts as well as natural disasters across the world, with scammers trying to trick people via, say, donation links.'It's really easy for the scammers to pick up on current events and then use that to trick well-intentioned people out of money, out of personal information, into installing apps that are dangerous,' she actors are also using Gen AI for greater productivity, language translation, and research, and the company is 'very concerned' about how the technology can make attacks easier, said information and signals about these trends among partners will help tackle the problem, she said, adding that AI is also key in identifying fraud emails or removing malicious is set to collaborate further with the ministry of home affairs, partnering with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) for user awareness on cybercrimes over the next two months.
Economic Times
11 hours ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Google releases 'safety charter' for India, senior exec details top cyber threat actors in the country
Live Events India has a unique lens on how technology is being used today, given the scale of the country, the speed at which people are coming online, and the vibrancy of the business community, said Heather Adkins , VP security engineering, Google . Threat actors responding to this ecosystem also provides a useful view of the evolving threat landscape, she said, adding that patterns seen in India may be translated in other parts of the on Tuesday released a 'safety charter' for India to address online scams and fraud, cybersecurity for government and businesses, and responsible artificial intelligence. The company is looking to deepen partnerships with the government, local organisations, and academia in these areas, said under the safety charter will be executed through the Google Security Engineering Centre being set up in a hub-and-spoke model across Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, she told engagements help to understand patterns better and protect people globally, Adkins said.'What we might learn about a pattern in India will then be automatically translated to a user somewhere else in the world, which is very beneficial for us,' she said, 'and because of India's scale, you have so many people online, that gives us a lens that's very unique in the world in terms of what we can see.'Fraudulent loan apps and 'digital arrest' scams, for instance, were seen emerging in the digital privacy laws emerging around the world, including India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, Adkins said the company advocates for standardisation and principles-based approach to enable a seamless experience as they adapt across countries, while factoring in local needs and innovation.'Regulation works well when it addresses the problem and gets it solved, and so what we don't want to see is regulation that makes the other problems worse,' she the question of heightened threats during conflicts like the recent India-Pakistan tensions, Adkins said cybersecurity is now a bigger factor in conflicts as well as natural disasters across the world, with scammers trying to trick people via, say, donation links.'It's really easy for the scammers to pick up on current events and then use that to trick well-intentioned people out of money, out of personal information, into installing apps that are dangerous,' she actors are also using Gen AI for greater productivity, language translation, and research, and the company is 'very concerned' about how the technology can make attacks easier, said information and signals about these trends among partners will help tackle the problem, she said, adding that AI is also key in identifying fraud emails or removing malicious is set to collaborate further with the ministry of home affairs, partnering with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) for user awareness on cybercrimes over the next two months.
