Account fraud prevention requires a holistic look at all the things that are happening on your customers’ accounts. Fraudsters will not only try to take over one account, but they will often use the information gathered from that attack to access other accounts and commit additional crimes.

The criminals behind these attacks can steal usernames and passwords by intercepting Wi-Fi traffic, using card skimmers on credit and debit card readers at ATM machines and gas pumps, or stealing information through other cyber attacks. They then combine this stolen data into a synthetic identity that is used to open new accounts and access goods and services.

Guarding Your Finances: Proactive Account Fraud Prevention Strategies

New account fraud is a growing challenge for firms. Traditional methods that rely on identity theft to prevent fraudulent activities at the onboarding stage produce dangerously high false negatives that lead to exploitation later on in the customer lifecycle.

To mitigate this risk, a firm should deploy solutions that provide true genuine presence assurance – which uses passive liveness detection to verify that the person opening an account is in fact physically present at the device they are authenticating on. Systems that use this technology can detect a wide variety of anomalies that are indicative of fraud, including the use of fake ID documents; a lack of social media activity that indicates a new account; and transfers in/out of an account that are beyond what would be expected based on salary data. These types of detection capabilities can be incorporated into a firm’s overall solution without compromising the user experience or negatively impacting customer service.

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