-
25 February 2021
- Data Security
All kinds of companies deal with sensitive data that has to be protected. There are numerous systems that must be protected from unauthorized users. Protecting your company against fraud and cyberattacks is the most important matter, but how can you ensure the safety of your resources?
You have to learn what types of company resources are in danger and what the best practices are that will ensure their safety. Outsourcing cybersecurity solutions is the most popular way nowadays to deal with the threat of fraud. Should small companies care just as much about fraud protection as large enterprises?
What is fraud?
When some person or organization commits an illegal act in order to gain financial advantage over another company we call it business fraud. There are of course other cyber crimes that may happen to your company – leaks of sensitive data, stealing information essential for maintaining advantage over competitors, identity theft, infecting devices with viruses and malware in order to disrupt their operation. Even today, when many cybersecurity solutions are available, fraud and cyberattacks remain a big problem.
Fraud and cybercrimes – who is at risk?
One of the main problems is that many businesses (especially small ones) don’t understand the risks or ignore them. As a result, when fraud attempts happen, they’re not ready to detect them and react accordingly to protect their business resources. It is true that new companies on the market may not yet have the financial resources to manage fraud prevention, although there are a lot of good practices that can help company owners and employees protect data, systems and financial resources. Big companies, though, should invest in specialized fraud protection services in order to ensure the safety of their capital and other possessions.
As the technology has grown significantly over the years, some laws needed to be established in order to improve security of companies and their customers. Activities that are nowadays called a cybercrime are: computer hacking, espionage, identity theft and for that matter any other theft (like stealing confidential data or money, by accessing private or company’s accounts), fraud. Those are, of course, only a few examples. Many laws and regulations were created to define and prevent cybercrimes. Anti-money laundering laws are extremely important for banking, which requires advanced cybersecurity solutions as banks deal with huge amounts of sensitive data and money of the customers. GDPR is the most important EU regulation on data protection and privacy. A lot of requirements and possible risks make many companies invest in the most advanced cybersecurity services for their protection.
Cybersecurity basics – what do you have to keep in mind?
First of all, you should educate your staff about the cybercrime risk. All employees should know the basic security rules concerning cybersecurity. When it comes to fraud, your workers can be your company’s biggest vulnerability, but they can also be the strongest defenders of your resources – you just need to prepare them. You can run regular trainings on cybersecurity and check your employees’ knowledge on your own (by using free educational materials from the Internet) or with the help of IT experts.
The next step will be securing your whole IT infrastructure. You can use special security systems or advanced services offered by experienced IT companies. There are many anti-virus, malware and spyware detection pieces of software on the market – it is not easy to choose from them though, especially if you lack specific knowledge about these kinds of systems. When it comes to cybersecurity, it is better to trust experts.
Your company’s credit cards and bank accounts should also be well protected. Employees that deal with money should be carefully chosen – background checks on potential workers whose duties would involve access to company accounts, credit cards and cash are not so rare, nor should they be. Having many accounts can make managing business expenses safer. Having a main account and others with the smaller amounts stored on them and cards with limits can help you control business expenses and secure most of the money in case of fraud. Bills and accounts should be used with secured mailboxes and it would be best if you used a dedicated device for running online financial transactions if you deal with a huge amount of money.
And the last thing you can do for your business without advanced technologies – purchase insurance that will protect you against the outcomes of fraud. Now, let’s see how you can secure your business from cybercrime using tech and IT services.
Verification systems
Your company has many resources – in addition to money, you have to remember to protect your data. You can do this by using verification, authentication and authorization systems. Having access protected by passwords is just the first step. You need to instruct your employees to change them regularly and to set different passwords for each system.
Your employees can verify themselves using the email or phone number with which they were first registered in your system. It is a good practice to use their work numbers and emails instead of personal ones. Authentication is a process that lets you verify identity with username and password. Authorization is a security mechanism which grants a particular user permission to access some specific resources.
Secure company’s device access by fingerprinting
IT is becoming much more common for companies to protect access to their resources by using fingerprinting. You should consider it if you deal with a great deal of sensitive data. Imagine that some systems and resources can be accessed by your employees only from dedicated devices. With fingerprinting security, only the chosen user can use the particular device.
Real-time system monitoring
IT companies that offer cybersecurity solutions can monitor your data stores, systems and transactions in order to learn patterns and detect some unusual behaviours in real-time. This kind of data monitoring is essential to ensure security. Experts can quickly spot suspicious actions, secure the data as they see fit and deal with possible security issues. This kind of service is a part of most fraud management services – it is wise to invest in such a solution if you deal with big data and you have many systems that should be controlled and protected.
Machine Learning
A company can always choose between simple, affordable solutions and those that are expensive and complex but which may be more effective. Some cybersecurity systems may be vulnerable to skilled fraudsters and hackers. Machine learning can help your organization to reduce false chargebacks and improve overall customer experience. This is a subset of artificial intelligence that uses special algorithms, statistical analysis and knowledge gained from previous datasets in order to learn patterns and protect your resources from cybercrime. This technology can possibly be used with other tools to track potentially dangerous files and eliminate malware before it causes damage in your systems or devices.
Fraud Managed Services – what are they?
As you can see, there are plenty of technologies that can – and should – be used in order to protect your company against fraud and any other types of cybercrime, although it may be rather difficult for you to deal with it by yourself. A managed services solution may be a cheaper and easier way to protect your organization. Companies that offer fraud prevention services have significant experience and advanced tools and technologies to ensure the safety of your resources.
What can you expect from these services? Surely a careful audit will be conducted in order to evaluate the techniques of fraud protection you have been using so far. You can count on experts that will monitor your transactions and activity in data stores and systems in real-time in order to identify risks or vulnerabilities. Companies that deliver fraud protection solutions can often take full responsibility for protecting your organization from cybercrime, so you can feel safe and focus on your business.
Advantages of fraud management services
- Access to advanced, modern fraud protection technologies, including machine learning.
- Protection by dedicated, experienced staff trained in fraud validation that will monitor your systems in real-time.
- Integration of new solutions with your existing fraud protection systems.
- Flexible, customized cybersecurity services that will suit your company’s needs.
- The responsibility for cybersecurity will be transferred to the IT company delivering fraud protection solutions.
Examples of the fraud and useful security procedures
Many companies don’t pay enough attention to security, until they experience the cybercrime themselves. You should consider possible dangers carefully and check if your security procedures are up to date. Each company has its resources to lose. In banking it can be customers’ data or actual money. Unauthorized Access to accounts, debit and credit card fraud are not so rare as you may think. Card numbers, PIN codes – all of them can be quite easily stolen. You wouldn’t believe how creative thieves are. You can accidentally share important information needed for accessing your accounts during phone calls, in email, by logging in on unsecure websites or because of breaches or a malware in your company’s systems. Cybersecurity is a part of our Data Science Consulting – find out how our knowledge can help your business.
Most common procedure that allows ensuring safety and preventing cybercrime is monitoring not only activity on your accounts but also in your systems. Any unauthorized access should be reported and you should react immediately by replacing all old passwords and identify the cause of the problem.
If your company develops or uses new technologies, you should remember that tech is one of your important resources. Such companies protect themselves not only by advanced cyber security solutions but also by preventing unauthorized access to devices used in work: fingerprints authentication, authorization, encryption. In case a device (like a computer) is stolen, companies can try to block access to Outlook, internal systems and change all passwords.
What fraud protection strategy would be best for your company?
Each company has its own, specific needs – fraud management services can mix technologies and processes specially tailored to your business expectations. Fraud and other kinds of cybercrime are an undeniable threat to any company. Contact us to learn more about the techniques that can be used to protect your company’s resources.
Check out our blog for more in-depth articles on Data Science & Advanced Analytics:
