Online fraud is among the top threats to remote workers.
In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 caused a pandemic of unprecedented proportions that disrupted business operations like never before. Lockdowns imposed in the name of public safety saw many organizations close their doors for good.
For organizations lucky enough to offer remote work as an option, these companies suddenly faced unique challenges. Fortunately, a mass exodus of workers being relocated from on-site to the comfort and safety of their own homes placed employees out of harm’s way.
The grim reality is that the opposite is true for your information systems and the data they manage. While emerging security concerns threaten your business due to the increase in remote work, online fraud is among the top threats to remote workers.
How does remote work enable fraud?
Changes in communication options
The ability to correlate events and share information would help fraud teams manage the increased workload since the pandemic began.
However, a lack of in-person communication often increases the likelihood of fraud. Should an employee notice something concerning, they can’t casually raise an open question to a room full of coworkers. As a result, fraud teams accustomed to this form of communication to successfully detect fraud are hit hard in this area.
Change in operating location
Fraud teams may have previously had the ability to collaborate and share in-person to walk through complex issues and disrupt fraud attempts. Unfortunately, this isn’t true for all teams anymore.
In some cases, employees may have relocated or decided to take advantage of the “work from anywhere” culture. Additionally, differences in time and location cause issues to become confusing. Your teams may not be able to manage them using traditional methods.
Changes in employee routines
While settling into new routines and workflows, your employees may seek workarounds to get the job done. With unapproved practices and inadvertent channels for loss of control of data placing sensitive information in harm’s way, criminals easily obtain and abuse this data.
Furthermore, if your organization handles payment card information, this places customer payment data right in the bad guy’s hands. Sudden spikes in activity send your fraud teams scrambling.
Balancing online fraud detection and remote work
Both employees and managers have been working to balance the remote environment with secure fraud prevention practices. However, some procedures work better than others.
In an effort to accomplish tasks, some fraud team members may stash spreadsheets in a DropBox account, spin up their own file server in the cloud to warehouse data, or use their personal email to send and receive sensitive information. Acceptable Use Policies tell users what they should and shouldn’t do. However, they don’t prevent employees from engaging in dangerous shadow IT practices. Fraud team members need an effective tool to provide balance in adapting to the new paradigm to accomplish tasks.
Moreover, your fraud prevention system can’t be so restrictive as to strangle your employees. Putting blocks and barriers in front of your most productive members isn’t an answer to remote work risks. You have to balance the needs of the workforce with protecting your organization from criminals focused on maximizing damage.
How Fraud.net can help fraud managers
Identity verification
With Fraud.net, you can take advantage of hundreds of identity proofing data points to bolster online fraud detection. Verify any new accounts and the subsequent transactions.
Utilizing these accurate, efficient checks, also creates an opportunity to reduce friction for customers as well as sales teams.
Your organization can enhance its online fraud detection capability with Fraud.net’s customer attribute database of:
- Shipping and billing addresses.
- Phone numbers.
- Email addresses.
- And more.
Stolen customer account data
By leveraging the power of machine learning models, Fraud.net’s precision-engineered solutions have the subtle characteristics of the industry that your organization operates in. Comprehensive scoring mechanisms that adapt to continuously updated analytics develop insightful risk scores.
From here, Fraud.net’s machine learning platform can learn from decisions made and progressively become more accurate over time. Think of this as the industry’s first smart weapon developed specifically for online fraud detection.
Website transaction protection
The collective network data that drives Fraud.net’s artificial intelligence protects your organization’s websites in order to secure internet transactions. It’s a simple process that’s designed to succeed:
- Get your organization’s website “Shield certified.”
- Display the shield seal to increase your security posture, customer trust and conversions.
- The built-in device fingerprinting can identify and track scores for devices as they access your website to register accounts or initiate transactions.
Customer account security
No fraud prevention program is complete without an added layer of authentication. Ensure your customer accounts are protected with Fraud.net’s multi-factor authentication (MFA) services. You can activate this degree of out-of-band security if something suspicious is detected from a customer account. For example, this could be a sudden login attempt from a different geographical location, a tell-tale sign that a malicious party may be attempting to access an account.
Challenge bots crawling the internet or criminals poking accounts with stolen credentials with Fraud.net’s authentication services.
Schedule your free demo today
Fraud.net is an industry leader in the fight against fraud during this challenging period in time. We can help your fraud teams detect these attempts and disrupt criminals before it’s too late. If you are looking for a defense platform for your long-term remote work environment, sign up for a free demo today.