Moving Beyond Traditional Fraud Detection Methods

By Ryan Wilk, Director of Customer Success, NuData Security

Another data breach happens every day, it seems. The list of affected companies reads like a “Who’s Who” of the business world. And just in time for the holiday shopping season, merchants have a new threat vector to monitor for that’s especially difficult to detect.

In the recent past, fraudsters would attempt to obtain credit card numbers to perform their malicious acts. Now, they’re on a mission to build a more comprehensive victim identity, stealing and compiling information that allows them to take over an entire online universe. With information collected from various breaches, such as email addresses, phone numbers, financial information, and physical location data, fraudsters gain the ability to open any account they want to (credit card, home loan, etc.). Various bits of victims’ information are combined to either take over their current accounts or defraud them through new account creations. With the holidays fast approaching, spending anticipated to ramp up and more sensitive information being communicated through the Internet, we may witness a major issue grow sharply in concern.

A common problem with many merchants today is that they’re looking at a user’s data presented only around when a transaction takes place. Fraudsters are getting very good at having accurate information available for a purchase and making it sync up with what is expected for each account they’re using. If merchants are not looking at a user’s behavior before, during and after a transaction, they are not fully understanding what’s happening on their website. With this incomplete view of a user’s visit, merchants are bound to miss data that could help them detect and stop fraud within their site.

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