iovation is continually developing new features to meet customer business challenges, keep pace with the constantly changing Internet environment, respond to great customer ideas, and meet our own internal strategic goals.

It’s been a busy year with a ton of new features and enhancements ranging from big to small. We thought we’d take a moment to share with you some of the highlights from 2011.

As with any technology, there are many, many things that go into a new feature including design, development, testing, documentation, integration and other operational requirements. We won’t go into that amount of detail here, but instead will focus on the primary achievements within each of the four principle areas of specialization at iovation, which include:

A few week’s back, I wrote how iovation’s fraud prevention service had been named as a finalist for the 2011 Red Herring 100 Global Award. This week we are proud to announce that iovation was named a Top 100 Global Company.

It’s truly an honor to follow in the footsteps of some of the most recognizable technology companies in the world such as Google, YouTube, Skype and eBay, who have all been previously selected to Red Herring’s prestigious Top 100 Global list.

This recognition is a direct result of years of hard work evolving our fraud protection service into a full spectrum device reputation solution that supports native and web integrations for mobile and desktop devices, tagged and tagless device recognition, real-time transparent risk scoring, and on-demand and scheduled reporting. Our remarkable growth is attributed to the collaborative work and effectiveness of our global device intelligence network, which today protects billions of transactions for our clients representing multiple industries around the globe. (more…)

Part of maintaining a strong corporate image is ensuring your customers are protected from all types of security threats. This is true for any organization as the health of their brand is often closely linked to their business success. That said, a recent study by TD Bank found that even with fraud cases on the rise, only one percent of small business owners surveyed said falling victim to fraud was a top business concern.

This casual, unwary approach toward security continues to boggle my mind, particularly in today’s highly volatile business environment. But while three-quarters of the small businesses polled said they are incorporating steps to protect their computer systems from fraudsters, Fred Graziano, head of the commercial and small business banking at TD Bank, said companies need to keep up with the latest available fraud preventative technologies and criminal tactics used by more sophisticated fraudsters. (more…)

As we all know, the Internet has done wonders for many businesses and for the global economy as a whole. Unfortunately, the same technology that revolutionized the way we communicate with each other has also created a fertile environment for inventive criminals.

Online crimes like credit card fraud and identity theft continue to cost businesses and individuals billions of dollars each year, and President Obama has now rattled his sabres about making it a top priority to fight cybercrime. In a recent International Business Times article, “Obama: Online Fraud Costs The Average Victim 130 Hours, $631,” we find that the Obama administration’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) aims at developing a program to ensure the safety and security of transactions over the Internet. (more…)

When Google launched Doodle-4-Google, in which children can compete to design Google’s homepage logo, they requested contestants’ Social Security numbers in an effort to prevent duplicate entries.

Americans have become accustomed to handing over the last four digits of their Social Security number as a password or identifier for various accounts and applications. But with the development of new technologies that have cracked the code for the distribution of Social Security numbers, the last four digits have become as sensitive and valuable as the first five.

The coder or marketer at Google who believes it’s reasonable to request the last four digits of children’s Social Security numbers is probably someone who readily shares his or her own number, which is not a good idea.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a reliable method to predict Social Security numbers using information from social networking sites, data brokers, voter registration lists, online white pages, and the publicly available Social Security Administration’s Death Master File.

The New York Times reports, “Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number… So far, this type of powerful data mining, which relies on sophisticated statistical correlations, is mostly in the realm of university researchers, not identity thieves and marketers.” (more…)

At the moment, I have no less than six different tabs open in my browser, each searching Craigslist for different items I need this spring: trailers, boats, patio furniture, musical instruments, and exercise equipment. Every day I refresh my search results, looking for the best deal. I’m confident that I’ll find what I’m looking for. Patience is the key.

Millions are doing the same thing. And unfortunately, many of them are being scammed out of their money as sellers provide explanations as to why an item is being sold, ranging from “not needed” to “my son died.”

A North Carolina woman and her mother were looking for a used car on Craigslist and found an “amazing, like, this can’t be true, deal.” The daughter contacted the seller, who replied with, “Automatic transmission. It’s in perfect condition. Exterior no scratches. Interior no rips, tears, stains.” The seller asked for $3,900, and added that the car had belonged to her son, who had died in a bike accident, and she wanted to sell the car quickly because it brought back difficult memories. (more…)

While the hot new iPad provides an exciting platform to surf the web, exchange emails and read books, users are also using the computer tablet to access their existing accounts on social networking sites, play virtual games, and make online purchases much like they would on their home computer.

This past week, iovation has seen a rapid adoption of the iPad being used at our customer sites. We’ve seen the number of iPad transactions grow by thousands every single day since the new device was made available. And these transactions aren’t just occurring within the same industry. In fact, we’re seeing iPad transactions on a multitude of verticals including travel sites, social networks, sportsbooks, dating sites, credit issuers, MMOs and online social games. And our job is to make sure that the transactions processed are from legitimate, good customers.

Topping the list of industries where we’ve seen the most online transactions this week is online communities at 45%, with the majority on social networking sites as opposed to dating sites. The second largest group was online retail, accounting for 28% of total iPad transactions. Most of those transactions occurred on travel sites. And lastly, international gambling sites such as sportsbooks came in third, at 23% of all iovation-protected iPad transactions.

So that’s where we’re helping customers, but what information do fraud teams share within our database in order to reduce fraud losses and ensure good customers have a positive experience on their site?

iovation tracks over 30 different types of bad behavior and this segmentation is important to our customers. How they treat evidence (specific types of fraud and abuse) changes across various industries. For example, an online retailer cares about mitigating chargebacks and catching criminal activity before product goes out the door, whereas an online community cares more about stopping spam, solicitations, predators and phishing attempts, in order to protect community members and maintain a safe and trusted environment.

Our customers can customize our fraud protection service to gain control over the specific transactions and activities that they correlate with high risk. This allows them to take more business with confidence and spend less time conducting costly manual reviews.

Believe it or not, within the first week of iPad sales, we have already uncovered fraudulent activity. Over half of all transactions denied from iPads were specifically related to credit card fraud. In other words, they were fraudsters attempting to monetize stolen identities on our customers’ websites.

As iPads connect to online businesses to create accounts, submit applications and make purchases, it is very important for organizations to know whether or not the device:

• has committed fraud or abuse on their site
• has committed fraud or abuse at another business
• has relationships with other devices or accounts that have been involved with fraud or abuse
• has not been seen before, but matches the profile of other high-risk or suspect devices

As iovation’s global shared database of over 275 million devices grows, so do the reputations of iPads used to request transactions. This is important information that companies can use to determine whether or not a transaction requested by an iPad, or any other Internet device, can be trusted and just the kind of information iovation provides to its valued customers.

The Merchant Risk Council (MRC) represents the largest and most influential constituency focused exclusively on making eCommerce more safe and secure. iovation is a proud sponsor of the Merchant Risk Council and brings you this interview and podcast with Executive Director, Tom Donlea.

Listen to the Podcast >

iovation: This is Scott Olson on behalf of iovation. I am here with Tom Donlea, the Executive Director of the Merchant Risk Council. Hi Tom.

Tom Donlea: Hi Scott.

iovation: Tom, as the Executive Director of the Merchant Risk Council, you lead this trade association made up of merchants, vendors, e-commerce management professionals, and law enforcement. I imagine this role gives you a great deal of insight into the key issues facing online merchants. After having just completed the Merchant Risk Council semi-annual platinum meeting and now preparing for the upcoming conference in March, is there one topic you would say is getting more attention than others?

Tom Donlea: Yes, Scott. I think for the MRC it has clearly been the economy. A lot of our merchants are increasingly focused on managing their costs and minimizing losses. They are getting a lot of pressure, so they are coming to the MRC with some very specific requests; three in fact. The first thing is they are looking for benchmarking data. They want to look at their costs, the resources they are using, and investments that they should put toward managing fraud risk. (more…)