Training your sights on online fraud

Every organisation that provides individual service to its customers, employees, members or community is faced with the very real concern of gaining and keeping their users' trust. Public awareness of phishing attacks, identity theft and online fraud makes informed users wary of disclosing personal information without strong assurance that their data is safe and that the entities with which they interact are what they claim to be.

The economics of doing business online are compelling. However, online fraud and identity theft continue to rise. Customers are increasingly aware of the potential risks associated with disclosing personal data, which is having a dampening effect on their willingness to transact online. Savvy organisations understand that they can't sit idly by - they must aggressively fight the fraud and they must simultaneously educate and assure their customer base, providing visible, additional measures to insure and reassure their communities that transacting business online is safe.

Recent Aberdeen research has shown that those organisations that are getting the best results in both growing user confidence and reducing fraud have over the last 12 months been able to reduce the number of incidents of fraud and reduce financial loss attributable to it. Simultaneously, they were able to increase the number of user accounts, the number of online transactions and the number of online transactions per user.

Survey results show that the top performing firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance share several common characteristics:

• 92% authenticate users at the creation of the account;
  
• 84% use encryption; and
  
• 68% monitor transactions.

Read the full article here.