As commerce becomes increasingly digital, financial fraud follows suit through sophisticated attacks seeking to intercept payments, steal customer data and exploit online transactions. Losses from ecommerce cybercrime now reach billions annually across credit card fraud, account takeovers and digital extortion cons. According to the fraud prevention experts over at Outseer though, businesses can protect revenue by embracing cyber security as a core strategy, not just an IT policy.
Prioritize Customer Data Security
At the heart of revenue protection is shielding customer payment and personal data from compromise. Attackers covet rich profiles combining financial, identity and contact information that are ideal for monetization. Implementing expansive data encryption, access controls and activity monitoring represents foundational best practices, alongside robust vulnerability testing. Fostering security-focused cultures stresses privacy protection priorities from staff to executives. Preventing data loss itself remains the ultimate fraud prevention.
Verify Identities Vigorously
Many fraud schemes rely upon impersonation and deception to authorize illegal transactions or access sensitive systems. Instituting rigorous identity verification requirements when customers contact support staff or complete high risk transactions thwarts such social engineering cons. Tactics like requiring government IDs for account changes or manager approvals for large payments confirm legitimacy and prevent fraudulent activity.
Vet Partners Closely
Third-party vendors, contractors and embedded payment systems represent prime targets for attackers seeking to infiltrate larger organization environments. Enforce security assessments to ensure external providers uphold adequate access policies, infrastructure protections, and breach liability. Legally obligate minimum controls contractually while limiting integrations to essential systems only. Repeatedly verifying partner security postures protects institutions indirectly from supplier cyber risk.
Inoculate Staff Through Training
Despite advanced security controls, staff often prove the easiest fraud entry point through exploitation of human nature. Comprehensive cyber security awareness programs unveil the common social engineering tactics that users face, like personalized phishing attempts, devious phone fraud pressure and sophisticated email cons. Training helps to inoculate workforces by explaining manipulation of red flags and forging collective vigilance. Emphasized reporting mechanisms encourage the surfacing of suspicious anomalies early before incidents mushroom enterprise wide.
Monitor Transactions Obsessively
Preventing financial fraud requires obsession level scrutiny of payment and account activity hunting for any suspicious indicators. Look for unusual patterns in timestamps, product mixes, shipping destinations and purchase amounts along with mismatching account details as fraud evidence. Custom analytics solutions supplemented by AI and machine learning take automation legwork out of obsessive data monitoring at enterprise scales across millions of transactions.
Accept Payments Cautiously
While digital transaction volume tempts merchants with elevated sales, each payment gateway welcomes some fraud liability. Businesses should carefully weigh risks of various tender types, avoid overexposure to chargebacks, and partner selectively with fraud prevention solution vendors providing liability assurances. Merchants can also leverage payer authentication standards for card payments as fraud liability transfer mechanisms and require confirmed digital wallet purchases prior to shipping goods. Payment acceptance carries inherent fraud risks requiring mitigation.
Respond Decisively to Attacks
Despite extensive precautions, successful attacks still occur in complex environments. Minimizing fraud means isolating and neutralizing breaches rapidly through automated fraud response playbooks to confirm incidents, notify customers, and remove compromised access pathways. Having reliable threat intelligence informing efficient response protocols proves essential to limiting casualties once criminals penetrate defenses. Quick reaction time ensures temporary successes remain isolated and managed.
Conclusion
With ecommerce projected to expand exponentially in the coming years, so too will the associated threats from organized cybercrime while attacks increase in sophistication. Embracing cyber security fundamentals around customer data protections, identity validation, vendor assessments, user awareness, analytics monitoring, and breach response preparation means organizations gain advantage defending precious revenue from constant fraudster assaults seeking easy paydays.