Don’t let cybercriminals slip through the cracks

May 2, 2019 by Biometric Signature ID

How to protect your platform, your users and reduce losses as fraudsters grow more sophisticated 

Bio Signature IDAccording to the U.S. Department of Education and Officer of Inspector General (OIG), financial student aid fraud tied to data breaches and fraudsters costs upwards of $6.2B annually. Internet or device-based fraud usually comes in the form of personal data theft (pins and passwords, social security numbers (SSN) via the hacking of your business (in order to commit direct theft) when criminals enter your enterprise network (usually through a weak password related hack). They can then use the valuable info they’ve hacked for ransomware, to resell or to access accounts. 

This type of online fraud can impact: 

Higher education 

As current events have recently illustrated, the education space is susceptible to fraudulent activity for many different reasons. But crimes are hardly limited to committing identity fraud for the sake of getting one’s kids into the right college. Online learning environments are especially vulnerable to direct theft: Both real and fictitious students engage in financial aid fraud. In fact, the feds suggest that 8.12% of all the FSA fraud an average school dispenses is “improperly paid” and must be paid back to the Department of Education, leaving that school to try and collect that debt from the fraudulent students … and one can only imagine how fruitful those efforts would be.   

Enterprise breaches

We seem to read about a new data breach every day. Fraudsters know how much personally identifiable information (PII) your business holds for all of your clients and users is worth… and just how valuable that information can be. Companies can end up paying almost $200 per breached record, BioSig-ID reports – and almost $400 per breached record for healthcare organizations

But fraudsters are hard to find. Cybercriminals slip through the cracks. Fortunately, there is a way to search through the raw data, pinpoint the fraudsters, and recover lost money. Fraud prevention can be built into an ecosystem, beginning with the front door, by looking at how users log-in and out of your platform (aka the most vulnerable point of entry). Certain approaches can prove to be problematic, however, because approving a user’s credentials is not enough. Networks can protect themselves by authenticating users and following our recommended best practices: 

  1. Use the gold standard of ID verification and authentication at onset of log-in
  2. Employ anti-fraud detection tools and measures to identity potential nefarious activity based on atypical behavior
  3. Choose tools that provide real-time warnings so that administrators can take appropriate steps immediately 
  4. Make sure forensics are in place to quickly reconstruct the intrusion and identify the perpetrator in real time
  5. Enlist quick analysis to determine what assets were touched and the extent of damage 

A savvy forensics system for fraud knows exactly who your users are and can track many factors from login patterns and attempts to activity and success rate. It can find anomalies and fakes that aren’t always detectable to the naked eye. Don’t spend valuable time chasing fraudsters and risk damaging your bottom line … choosing the right solution can spell the difference between success and utter failure.