By: Maria Moynihan
Cybersecurity, identity management and fraud are common and prevalent challenges across both the public sector and private sector. Industries as diverse as credit card issuers, retail banking, telecom service providers and eCommerce merchants are faced with fraud threats ranging from first party fraud, commercial fraud to identity theft. If you think that the problem isn’t as bad as it seems, the statistics speak for themselves:
- Fraud accounts for 19% of the $600 billion to $800 billion in waste in the U.S. healthcare system annually
- Medical identity theft makes up about 3% of 8.3 million overall victims of identity theft
- In 2011, there were 431 million adult victims of cybercrime in 24 countries
- In fiscal year 2012, the IRS’ specialized identity theft unit saw a 78% spike from last year in the number of ID theft cases submitted
The public sector can easily apply the same best practices found in the private sector for ID verification, fraud detection and risk mitigation. Here are four sure fire ways to get ahead of the problem:
- Implement a risk-based authentication process in citizen enrollment and account management programs
- Include the right depth and breadth of data through public and private sources to best identity proof businesses or citizens
- Offer real-time identity verification while ensuring security and privacy of information
- Provide a Knowledge Based Authentication (KBA) software solution that asks applicants approved random questions based on “out-of-wallet” data
What fraud protection tactics has your organization implemented? See what industry experts suggest as best practices for fraud protection and stay tuned as I share more on this topic in future posts. You can view past Public Sector blog posts here.
