Fraud attempts: Back to school shopping can be a summer storm

by Traci Krepper 1 min read August 17, 2015

Increased volume of fraud attempts during back to school shopping season

shutterstock_300833339Back to school shopping season will be the first time many consumers’ use their chip-enabled credit cards and stores’ new card readers. With the average K-12 family spending $630.36 per child in back to school shopping, and more than 1/3 shopping online, according to the National Retail Federation – is your fraud strategy prepared to handle the increased volume? And are you using a dynamic knowledge based authentication (KBA) solution that incorporates a wide variety of questions categories as part of your multi-faceted risk based authentication approach to fraud account management?

Binary verification, or risk segmentation based on a single pass/fail decision is like trying to stay dry in a summer rain storm by wearing a coat. It’s far more effective to wear rubber boots and a use an umbrella, in addition to wearing a rain coat. Binary verification can occur based on evaluating identity elements with two outcomes –pass or fail – which could leave you susceptible to a crafty fraudster.

When we recommend a risk based authentication approach, we take a more holistic view of a consumers risk profile. We advocate using analytics and weighting many factors, including identity elements, device intelligence and a robust knowledge-based authentication solution that work in concert to provide overall risk based decision.  After all, the end-goal is to enable the good consumers to continue forward based, while preventing the fraudster from compromising your customer’s identity and infiltrating you’re your business.

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