“I hired a company to handle my fraud prevention strategy… That’s all automated.”

Response: No you didn’t. No it isn’t.

There are many examples of extraordinarily-talented people in our community, many of which represent effective and powerful SaaS offerings.

Each offering, as effective as it may be, can only serve as a tool. Consider the use of a hammer. Great for nails. Not so good when applied to screws. Change the use case, change the tool.

A fraud prevention strategy has 3 fundamental elements.

1. It must consider all of the interactions and engagements between users and your staff. Simply put, fraudsters will leverage much more than your checkout form when attacking your operation. Knowledgeable CS staff, expansive datasets, early detection software, in-house data and analytics, the list goes on….

2. It must be able to pivot and respond nimbly to new methods. We, as a community, deal with historical data analytics as well as hypothetical scenarios and testing. We have to identify exposure and put data in place to monitor performance. Every new method is just that… new. Our eyes are our data. When a new trend is identified, we need to respond quickly.

3. It must isolate vulnerabilities resulting in losses and track their performance. This will ultimately tell us what a company needs to pursue, what information is available, and what direction should be outlined in a strategy.

The direction is represented by “The screw, the nail, or something else entirely”.

An automated process is only a part of the strategy, and an effective strategy can vary greatly between merchants who appear to be very similar.

Not all vendors meet all of the requirements of all the merchants.

Did you spot the issue of the cogs in the featured image? None of them can turn because they aren’t laid out properly.  

Be proactive, my friends.