Fraud Prevention in the Contact Center

The recent data breach at Equifax probably got your attention. Now what can you do about it? Data breaches are not new to enterprises, governments, and individuals – but the impacts are getting further and deeper for all their victims. One way to attack the attackers is through stronger analytics and actions in your contact center. Here’s why it’s important to do so…

Fraudsters with their eyes on the prize of customers’ bank, credit card and other financial or monetary accounts are increasingly taking advantage of poor or inconsistent protection in contact center systems because it’s easier than penetrating tight security on networks, apps and mobile devices. By using the interactive voice response (IVR) system for data gathering, or by sweet-talking an agent into a lapse, the criminal may snag details needed to access and drain the account. That’s why contact centers need a holistic, multi-layered approach for authentication, fraud prevention, detection and remediation. Benjamin Franklin would agree – here's why...

In part one of this adaptive fraud prevention blog series, we revealed that one in 360 (1/360) calls are fraudulent and an alarming 25% of those fraudulent calls lead to the successful compromise of accounts. We also noted that 70% of call center fraud is committed by repeat offenders, according to Gartner.

As consumers continue to ditch their landlines in favor of mobile phones and less expensive voice over IP (VOIP) connections, fraudsters are finding new ways to exploit telephony technology for maximum financial gain.

‘Tis the season for fraud, which means that criminals are increasing their efforts to take advantage of cardholders, retailers, and consumers through scams such as account take-overs, probing activity, and phone spoofing. Retailers are one and a half times more vulnerable to consumer chargeback between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Chargebacks act as a form of consumer protection to offer remedy to individuals who have experienced identity theft, merchant errors or unethical business practices. Retailers can minimize the risk of chargebacks by implementing the correct fraud prevention methods before chargebacks hit.

In the first post in this series about the rise of the modern fraudster, we explored how cybercriminals – the twenty-first century’s version of bank robbers – are continually looking for new opportunities to part consumers from their cash and credit.

As financial institutions layer on more security to prevent cyberattacks and online fraud, the criminals have begun looking for new ways to earn their dubious livings. In this post, we’ll explore the ways fraudsters are using call centers and self-service customer support technology to score.

Frank Abagnale spoke at this year’s EBT Next Generation Conference about Identity theft, and had two sound pieces of advice for everyone.  The first is to follow the money. The second is to think outside the box.

Who is Frank Abagnale and why should we listen to him?

Frank Abagnale was the subject of the movie Catch Me If You Can, and famously scammed the banks with check cashing schemes while also impersonating an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. He has since become an authority on identity theft working for the FBI for 40 years, and writing several books on identity theft, including Stealing Your Life in 2007.