Five Digitally Vulnerable Areas Your Business May be Overlooking
IBM moved today to take a bigger bite out of fraud by combining various pieces of software and services into a common framework that is simpler to deploy.
Rick Hoene, worldwide fraud solutions leader for IBM Global Services, says that while IBM has been delivering technologies to fight fraud for over 20 years, the scope of criminal fraud activity now requires a more integrated approach. To that end, IBM is launching a Smarter Counter Fraud initiative, which is based on IBM Counter Fraud Management Software and existing assets. This combination creates a single offering that is simpler to both acquire and install.
Based on IBM’s Big Data analytics technologies, the IBM software is designed to aggregate data from external and internal sources and apply analytics in ways to prevent, identify and investigate suspicious activity. It includes analytics that identify non-obvious relationships between entities, visualization technology that identifies patterns of fraud, and machine-learning software to help prevent future occurrences of fraud based on previous discoveries.
Hoene says being able to discover patterns of fraud is key to preventing future instances. Fraud already collectively costs businesses trillions of dollars each year. By identifying fraudulent transactions, IBM can help businesses reduce costs that many businesses today simple pass on to customers as part of the cost of doing business.
IBM also launched a fraud intelligence task force, dubbed IBM Red Cell, that will work in tandem with the IBM X-Force security research unit to continuously research trends, develop strategies and deliver enhancements to the software and services.
Down the road, Hoene says it’s only a matter of time before IBM starts to deliver these counter fraud capabilities as a service that it manages on behalf of its customers. In the future, Hoene says IBM will also be applying the cognitive computing capabilities of its Watson supercomputer to combat fraud.
In the meantime, organizations that need to drop additional revenue to the bottom line might want to take a hard look at how much of their money is being diverted into transactions that may seem innocuous, but may be part of a criminal enterprise that has been siphoning off money from the company.
