What is fraud intelligence?

Fraud intelligence is the process of gathering and analysing data to understand and combat fraudulent activities. It involves using various techniques to identify patterns, trends, and indicators of fraudulent transactions, account takeovers, financial fraud, and other malicious attempts.

Cyber fraud intelligence aims to provide organsations with insights into emerging fraud tactics, the modus operandi of fraudsters, and potential vulnerabilities in their systems or processes that could be exploited for fraudulent purposes.

The cost of online payment fraud alone is estimated to exceed $362 billion globally by 2028, per Juniper Research. By leveraging fraud intelligence, organisations can proactively detect, prevent, and mitigate fraudulent activities, which can save organisations significant time, safeguard their assets, and maintain their reputation and stakeholders’ trust.

Benefits of fraud intelligence to businesses

Fraud and risk intelligence helps detect and prevent fraudulent transactions, saving businesses from significant financial losses. It is estimated that fraud is costing the UK economy £219 billion per year. Fraud can result in stolen funds, cardholder disputes and additional costs associated with investigating and resolving fraudulent activity.

However, fraud intelligence goes beyond simply preventing financial crime. It helps maintain compliance, protects brand reputation, drives operational efficiency and can provide a competitive advantage.

Specifically, the benefits of fraud intelligence include:

  • Enhanced compliance – Fraud intelligence helps businesses ensure compliance with anti-fraud regulations and industry standards. For instance, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations require businesses to implement measures to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. Fraud intelligence helps businesses identify suspicious activity that might be linked to these illegal activities.
  • Brand reputation – Fraudulent activity can damage a business’s reputation by eroding customer trust and confidence. Fraud intelligence helps protect the brand and maintain a positive image.
  • Operational efficiency – Fraudulent activities can disrupt business operations, leading to downtime and decreased productivity. Fraud intelligence enables swift detection and response to fraudulent incidents which helps ensure business continuity.
  • Improved customer experience: Faster and more accurate fraud detection and prevention helps prevent legitimate transactions from being flagged and declined, providing a smoother experience for genuine customers. It also builds customer trust.
  • Leveraging existing data – By utilising data from an organisation’s own systems and customer interactions, businesses can gain valuable insights into their unique risk profile. This first–party intelligence helps organisations develop comprehensive fraud detection and prevention strategies tailored to their specific needs.

In addition to financial crime prevention , insights from fraud intelligence allow businesses to stay ahead of new cyber threats and adapt their strategies accordingly – strengthening an organisations overall security posture. It can also inform business decisions related to resource allocation and risk management.

A proactive approach to the prevention of financial crime not only leads to cost savings, it can also enable businesses to create a more secure and trustworthy environment for themselves and their customers.

Preventing financial crime with fraud intelligence

Fraud intelligence is a powerful tool for combating a wide range of financial crimes. It is particularly useful for financial services organisations – a prime target for cyber fraud due to their interconnected IT systems and high transaction volumes, as well as the access they provide to valuable data and assets.

The types of financial crime that can be prevented or mitigated with fraud intelligence include:

  • Payment fraud, which includes the unauthorised use of credit cards, debit cards or digital payment systems to make purchases or transactions. This can include card-not-present fraud (where card details are used for online transactions without the physical card), card skimming (where card information is stolen from physical cards), and account takeover fraud (where fraudsters gain unauthorised access to accounts to make fraudulent transactions.
  • Identity theft, where personal information, such as name, Social Security number, or financial details, is stolen with the intent to commit fraud, such as impersonating the victim to apply for credit or loans in their name, make unauthorised purchases, or access their accounts
  • Brand abuse, which is the unauthorised use or misuse of a company’s brand name, trademarks, logos or intellectual property for fraudulent or deceptive purposes. This can include counterfeit products, fake websites or social media accounts, phishing scams, and other forms of fraud that exploit the trust and reputation of well-known brands to deceive consumers or defraud them of money or personal information.
  • Stolen account information or credentials, which refers to the unlawful acquisition of usernames, passwords, or other login credentials that grant access to online accounts or systems. This stolen information is often obtained through phishing attacks, malware infections, data breaches, or social engineering tactics. Once obtained, fraudsters can use these credentials to steal sensitive information or conduct fraudulent transactions on behalf of the account holder.

By alerting organisations to fraud risk, fraud intelligence can significantly reduce the risk of financial crime and protect businesses from financial losses.

Silobreaker fraud intelligence

Cybercriminals continually evolve their tactics, making it challenging for businesses to keep pace with the increasing complexity of fraud schemes. Sifting through vast amounts of data and false positives can be a daunting task, hindering the identification of genuine threats that pose risks of financial loss or damage to brand reputation.

Silobreaker offers a multi-faceted approach to combat cybercrime and fraud. By monitoring various threat vectors, including compromised credential leaks, card fraud, brand abuse and impersonation, initial access brokers and emerging fraud techniques, Silobreaker provides comprehensive coverage to detect potential threats.

This proactive approach enables early detection and prevention of threats, allowing businesses to mitigate negative impacts and financial losses. By safeguarding sensitive data, intellectual property, brand reputation and customer loyalty, Silobreaker helps businesses maintain a resilient security posture in the face of evolving cyber threats.