I am very excited to share the news that for the second straight year, iovation has been named a finalist for Best New Technology at the upcoming 2nd Annual Online Dating Industry Awards. After taking home last year’s title for Best New Technology for a SaaS solution that detects fraud before the online business or customers are impacted, this award recognizes our new solution for the “best individual technology created by a vendor for dating and matchmaking websites.”

This is quite an honor for a team so dedicated to building and delivering solutions to help online dating sites protect their business and members from fraud and abusive behavior.

Released in the fall, ReputationManager 360 steps up the defense against online crime activity and abuse by combining customizable business rules, risk profiles, device anomalies, and the firsthand experience of 2,000 fraud analysts around the world.

eHarmony’s Director of Risk Management, Ella Grutman, states, “eHarmony continuously identifies and applies the latest and best fraud protection tools. iovation offers the most comprehensive and effective option to augment our current methods.” (more…)

As I’ve discussed recently, ‘tis the season to be wary of Grinch-like Internet scams. This time of year, cyber criminals are working around the clock doing everything they can to steal consumers’ identities, financial details and money. In the article, “The 12 Scams of Christmas and Other Attacks,” Internet security analyst, Robert Siciliano, highlights the many ways criminals are trying to take advantage of online shoppers this holiday season, and precautions consumers can make to protect themselves.

Raising consumers’ awareness of new holiday scams is also in the best interest of online businesses. Doing so can help prevent criminals from stealing consumers’ financial information and identities that they use to perpetrate identity fraud against businesses and financial institutions.

The following are some of Siciliano’s top scams that hackers are using this holiday season to trick consumers into divulging their personal and financial information: (more…)

It’s that time of year again, when fraud managers everywhere are working diligently to ensure their websites and online stores are protected from higher volumes of cybercrime. Unfortunately, the busy holiday shopping season has most fraud managers on high alert to make sure they’re keeping up with new and evolving fraud schemes that can put a serious damper on their end-of-the-year sales.

With cybercrime more prevalent during the holiday rush, this got me thinking about what gifts would be at the top of fraud manager’s wish lists, and how iovation can help fulfill those holiday wishes. Here is my list of the top gifts fraud managers would like to see this holiday season:

1. Secure online and mobile transactions: Online and mobile payments are the lifeblood of many companies today. Having the right tools to secure both online and mobile transactions is critical to mitigating fraud risks. In addition to identifying computers accessing their online stores, iovation helps companies assess risk on all transactions from iPads, tablets, and mobile devices including iPhones, Android, Blackberries, and many other brands.

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In the movies, there’s Batman and Robin, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and most recently, the resurgence of the Green Hornet and Kato. These popular crime fighting duos combine their individual strengths to combat criminal forces that are out to steal or destroy innocent victims. Similarly, hackers are perpetrating criminal activity across the Internet to steal people’s identities and use that information against organizations to commit all types of identity fraud.

Many companies are working hard to deploy effective security tools to protect their own organizations’ IT environments as well as their valued customers from online threats. The goal is to find a balance and a cooperative strategy to implement anti-fraud protections and management techniques that work together, however in many cases these tools end up working independently of each other and are not as effective as solutions that work together by design.

Like any great crime fighting duo, iovation’s comprehensive ReputationManager 360 risk mitigation service combines real-time risk and device reputation — two complementary transaction risk analysis features by nature — to provide a stronger, more powerful defense against more sophisticated and evolving cyber crimes. (more…)

As the holiday shopping season officially kicks off this week, Webroot reports that 55% of all web users will shop online this Christmas. That’s a 38% jump from last year. While this is good news for online retailers, it’s also a time for merchants of all sizes to be on full alert as cyber criminals work around the clock during the holiday season.

According to the article, “Watch out for credit card hackers this Christmas,” Rob McAdam of Pure Hacking, an organization dedicated to helping businesses protect their information assets, said it’s just not large corporations that hackers are targeting during the holiday season, but mid-sized retailers are becoming more and more affected by security breaches involving credit cards.

“We are typically finding larger retailers that rely on reputable payment gateways and who have made data security a priority are no longer the main targets for fraud.”

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A pair of cyberfraud advisories were issued to warn businesses and consumers about corporate account takeover fraud.

According to Errol Weiss, who runs the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) corporate account takeover task force, the effort by his group and other federal law enforcement agencies is to make businesses and consumers more aware of this type of cybercrime and provide recommendations on how they can protect themselves against such attacks. (more…)

Follow the money is a phrase we’re all familiar with. Unfortunately, it also happens to be a favorite mantra for fraudsters, too.

As more and more merchants offer mobile payment options to their customers, cyber criminals are quickly moving into the mobile channel. In the Digital Transactions article, “Mobile-payments fraud starts to take its toll,” a recent study by Javelin Strategy & Research found that fraud losses from mobile payments as a percentage of total revenue were 1.13% compared to the 0.83% for online-only merchants and 0.86% for multi-channel merchants.

This trend doesn’t surprise Jim Rice, director of market planning for retail and e-commerce marketing at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. While the mobile channel represents a new way for businesses to connect with their customers, it’s also another opportunity where fraudsters will try to make a dishonest buck. (more…)

As more and more online retailers go global, they face a number of challenges around securing customer data and the online payment process. In the article, “Security expert talks alternative payments, fraud protection and global expansion,” Souheil Badran of First Data shares his insights on how companies can protect their sensitive information from fraud.

In a nutshell, merchants must take a proactive approach by adopting tailored fraud and risk management solutions to protect their businesses. As fraudsters become more sophisticated, Badran said protecting an online business environment from fraudulent orders and safeguarding cardholder data is critical to overall business revenues and brand reputation. (more…)

A recent global study on online security revealed that over the past year nearly one in three U.S. online consumers have experienced online credit card fraud. The study, which surveyed the experiences and perceptions of consumers from the U.S., Finland, Malaysia, Poland, Sweden and the U.K., had some interesting findings, including:

Studies like these continue to remind us of how vulnerable consumers are to the growing threats that exist online. Unfortunately, the second victim to these crimes are the online merchants that are targeted by cyber criminals using stolen data to commit fraudulent transactions. (more…)

iovation is pleased to announce Summit Racing Equipment as the latest subscriber to its global, shared fraud and abuse-fighting service, ReputationManager 360.  ReputationManager 360 helps online businesses identify when a known bad device (such as a computer or mobile phone) touches their site and assesses risk based on device characteristics, behavior and experiences.  In this partnership, iovation will help Summit Racing reduce fraud losses, increase operational efficiencies and ensure that their customers have a positive and hassle-free experience on their website.
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As we wrap up the third quarter of 2010, iovation continues to see significant growth in the total number of device reputation checks performed for online businesses, along with the number of unique devices managed in the Device Reputation Authority (DRA) database.

With only three months remaining, iovation has already increased the annual growth rate for processed transactions by 67% over 2009. With more than 3.9 billion cumulative device reputation checks processed for e-commerce, financial, travel, gaming and online communities today, we expect to break 4 billion early in Q4.

We’ve also increased the overall number of unique devices by 110% over last year. Starting in 2006 with 5 million devices in our system, we now manage more than 390 million unique devices (including PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Blackberries, Android, etc.). Surpassing 400 million unique devices is just on the cusp.

With cybercrime fraud losses more than doubling in 2009, Internet-based businesses need security solutions that allow them to proactively identify and make educated decisions on all incoming transactions. Through fraud and abuse evidence submitted by our worldwide, cross-industry subscriber base, iovation ReputationManager 360 combines device and account profiles, analytics, custom reporting, real-time business rules, device anomalies, and the experience and expertise of over 2,000 fraud analysts to help customers make quick, confident decisions on every online transaction request.

When it comes to running an online business, there’s really only one thing that matters — trust. With criminal activity rampant across the Internet, building and maintaining a trustworthy website is essential for online business success.

According to the article, “In the new Wild West, the bad guys are online,” cyber crime costs global e-commerce tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Armando Dacal, director of authentication services at VeriSign, says in order for companies to succeed in this wild west environment, they need to ensure their websites are trustworthy. (more…)

For many online merchants, friendly fraud is a persistent problem. Without the right security tools in place, it is difficult to identify whether or not a customer is committing fraud.

According to the article, “Friend and Foe? Combating E-Commerce ‘Friendly Fraud’,” financial cybercrime against card-not-present (CNP) retailers can take many forms. While MasterCard says 70% of all e-commerce chargebacks are identified as fraud, more and more cardholders are committing friendly fraud due to buyers’ remorse or financial hardships. Although merchants are doing everything they can to reduce refund rates – from conducting operational assessments, marketing data analysis, and adopting a payer authentication program – they still don’t have the information needed to proactively identify and prevent friendly fraud before it happens.

While some merchants feel friendly fraud is impossible to prevent, there are solutions available that enable online businesses to proactively identify computers that have a habit of committing friendly chargebacks.

iovation ReputationManager 360 will assess risk on incoming transactions and identify whether the device being used has committed friendly chargebacks on other websites. By leveraging known intelligence and inference of risk while website visitors interact with a business’s website, they can “deny” incoming transactions when risk levels thresholds are met.

When businesses choose to “review” transactions associated with friendly chargeback histories, they will research the transaction, account or device within the ReputationManager portal. Here they will see all the other subscriber evidence related to that particular customer.

In the unfortunate event that a merchant is hit with a friendly chargeback, they will then place evidence against that account to avoid repeat offenses such as additional fraudulent orders. Merchants choose between 32 different types of fraud or abuse when placing evidence in the ReputationManager portal.

Utilizing device reputation as a best practice for fraud protection is critical to reducing fraud losses and boosting profitability, gaining operational efficiencies with the fraud prevention process, and ensuring that good customers have a safe and positive experience while interacting on your website.

When it comes to online dating scams, we all like to believe we learn from our own, and others, experiences. But according to new statistics on Romancescams.org, a website dedicated to fighting online romance scams, the average loss per person involved in a romance scam has climbed to a staggering $11,500. That’s up from a 2007 report where the advocacy group cited the average loss per victim was $7,900.

According to the article, “Website offers forum on avoiding romance scams,” fraudsters continue to successfully scam unsuspecting lonely hearts by using stolen credit cards to join online dating sites and set up fake profiles. From there, they quickly lure their victims off the dating sites and onto more personal lines of communications such as instant messaging and email before romance sites can discover the stolen credit card and pull their fake profiles. (more…)

iovation will be presenting at the Ticket Summit on July 16 at the Venetian Hotel Resort Casino in Las Vegas. Ticket Summit brings together leaders in the ticketing community and affiliates to network and discuss the latest advancements, methods and technologies in the secondary ticketing industry.

I am looking forward to presenting fraud solutions that online ticketing companies can use to identify and prevent online ticket scams that typically result in chargebacks, increased fees and other fraud losses for agents, box office managers and event promoters.

iovation has had great success in decreasing online fraud and abuse in the ticketing community with customers like New Era Tickets, who saw a 98% reduction in total fraud losses with iovation’s services. (more…)