April 24th, 2008 - No Comments »
While at the RSA show, I sat down with BankInfoSecurity to discuss the major business trends in fraud management. In the podcast interview, we discussed how financial institutions, along with all other industries, are seeing a lot more organized fraud occurring in their space, and what available technologies online businesses are looking at to add to their existing techniques to not only catch more fraud, but reduce their operational costs and protect their brands. Read the rest of this entry »
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April 16th, 2008 - No Comments »
I just got back from the RSA Conference in San Francisco and I was really struck by the number of security vendors out there and how many of them are either insurance vendors or simply provide a means for complying with government regulations. I have actually worked in that world for over 14 years and know about the difficulty in that type of sale and the challenge of being perceived as a cost center. I feel very fortunate to be in a business where the essential pitch is – spend $1 save $10. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 24th, 2008 - No Comments »
In a recent article on The Article Manual, Brandi Cummings highlighted some interesting dilemmas in online commerce that lead to over $3 billion in online losses to fraud over the last year. One of the most interesting dilemmas is that with many of the newest fraud management techniques, such as requiring address verification, as well as card verification (i.e. CVV2, CID, etc), the fraudsters are simply stealing that information along with the credit card number and other personal information.
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March 19th, 2008 - No Comments »
Yesterday on silicon.com, Andy McCue wrote about the shortcomings of law enforcement in addressing e-crime. This has been the case since the beginning of the Internet and will continue to be the case into the near future. The problem stems from the very strengths that make the Internet so powerful. That is, it creates instant worldwide connectivity to online resources. This poses a significant problem, not only in leadership and technical expertise, but in simple logistical issues such as jurisdiction, common worldwide laws governing e-crime, and the extremely difficult issue of associating online criminal behavior with a real-world individual. And this doesn’t even touch the fact that the volume of online theft and access to stolen personal information or stolen credit card numbers is so abundant that there is simply too much fraud for over-stretched law enforcement officials to pursue. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 17th, 2008 - No Comments »
iovation recently returned from this year’s Merchant Risk Council (MRC) in Las Vegas. It was a terrific show! We met online retailers and demonstrated how our device reputation fraud management services defend online merchants from sophisticated and organized fraud tactics.
I wanted congratulate all of the winners of our “Spin the Wheel to Win a Playstation 3″ contest — Nancy Meyer, Digital River, Inc.; Tim Westland, Kingston Technologies; Patrick Thompson, Genica Corporation (Geeks.com); and Martin Herlinghaud, arvato financial services Ltd. They each walked away with one of the hottest games on the market. You can imagine the heroes they were when they got home. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 27th, 2008 - No Comments »
A recent article on Tech Confidential highlighted the growing fraud management problem inside the massively multiplayer online game MMOG industry. During a discussion at the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, industry veterans highlighted the ongoing problem of credit card fraud and chargebacks from a variety of sources. One of the most troubling problems is the use of stolen or manufactured cards that get used to pay for in-game assets or gaming cards and then get charged back. Many times these chargebacks originate from organized fraudsters who use stolen credit information to perpetrate the fraud. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 25th, 2008 - No Comments »
There is an interesting article in Internet Retailer that notes that “with e-commerce growing at 20% or more per year, larger merchants will be faced with screening more and more online orders, representing a major challenge to the extent that review processes involve manual review.” They go on to add that, “Only 24% of the 404 online merchants surveyed say they have budgeted to boost manual review staff this year to support higher order volume.” The implication of the article is that since companies don’t have the budget to add staff for increased manual reviews, they will have to let more fraud through than before and make choices about what fraud they really care about, or dramatically increase the efficiencies of their fraud management process to reduce the burden of manual reviews for otherwise good transactions or false positives. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 18th, 2008 - 1 Comment »
In her report titled “Best Practices in New Account Fraud Detection“, Gartner Group analyst Avivah Litan points out the benefits of several different fraud screening techniques that online businesses can use to help identify fraud at the time of account creation. She recommends companies should use Client Device Identification and identified iovation as one of the providers of that technology. This is more confirmation that the use of device-based fraud management techniques is becoming a more critical element of online fraud management strategies. There is still education, however, that needs to be done about the power of using device identifiers to create a shared device reputation network and how that can benefit companies combating fraud and abuse online. Read the rest of this entry »
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January 31st, 2008 - No Comments »
Love is in the air for the 1,000-plus U.S. online dating sites that make up the profitable industry. According to a recent Time/CNN article, Jupiter Research reported the online dating market cashed in $649 million in revenue in 2006 alone!
But as Internet cupids look to tap into the fertile China and India dating markets to grow business profits, cybercriminals searching match-making sites are posing greater threats as they become increasingly more professional and sophisticated in their tactics. Scambusters.com has recognized this emerging trend in its annual predictions of worst Internet scams. For this first time, “Online Dating Scams” drops in at No. 8 on this year’s Top 10 scams to avoid in 2008. With online dating scams on the rise, now is the time for match-making sites to put a priority on protecting their online businesses by finding and blocking scammers from their site, and subsequently, providing a safer environment for their members. Read the rest of this entry »
Corporate, Online Communities, Financial Services, eCommerce, Online Gaming
January 23rd, 2008 - No Comments »
Since iovation is in London this week presenting at the ICEi Gaming conference, this Internet Retailing article caught my eye showing that current fraud management costs even for medium size businesses in the UK are upwards of 160,000 pounds per year. Additionally, this call to action caught my eye, “Efforts to tackle fraud are being hampered by a lack of co-ordination from card companies and the police, and merchants are asking for a central body to co-ordinate fraud reports.”
In particular, it is the desire for online businesses to coordinate their fraud efforts that is essential to their success. This is why the Device Reputation Authority was created by iovation, so that online businesses don’t have to wait for the Government to figure out a strategy to addressing online risk, but immediately provides online customers to identify fraudsters and share that information with their peers while still protecting the privacy of their customers. Read the rest of this entry »
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