Practical Fraud Prevention

Foreword

Very few people who identify as “fraud fighters” in the digital world began their careers with the intention of fighting fraud. Apart from one or two universities around the world, there isn’t a standard course of study or a major that will prepare a young person for what they need to understand in the “real world” of identifying cybercrime. And until now, there hasn’t been a book that provides practical knowledge or advice on how to get started or refine current strategies. Most of us learned our craft through on-the-job training and continual trial and error. As such, the need for a training manual of foundational knowledge across the various sectors of our emerging industry is very real.

Billions of dollars are lost to online payment fraud annually, often without much recourse for victim companies. This makes it critically important to identify suspicious and fraudulent behavior in advance, prior to bad actors committing the crime. Those outside this niche industry may assume that fraudulent orders or accounts present themselves in red blinking lights, or some other obvious form. The truth is that bad actors have the sole intention of having their online activity blend in with that of legitimate users. It is our job as fraud fighters to home in on the anomalies of their information, devices, and human behavior to identify risk indicators.

To add to the challenge (but also the fun), there is no one way to identify risky activity across multiple business models, verticals, ...