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Historically, banks and financial institutions were the primary targets for fraudsters. However, as digital channels become more prevalent, diverse customer-facing applications such as airlines, travel platforms, telcos and digital wallets are increasingly at risk. These sectors offer new opportunities for fraudsters to exploit vulnerabilities and monetize fraud by taking over accounts loaded with credits, saved payment details, coupons and loyalty program refunds.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss the emerging fraud scenario targeting the non-financial institutions and how to prevent fraud and provide your customers with trust and security without compromising their experience.
Fraudsters are continuously developing sophisticated methods to exploit vulnerabilities in digital channels, often resorting to social engineering to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential information. Credential stuffing, where stolen usernames and passwords are used to gain unauthorized access, is another common tactic.
Fraudsters also find ways to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) measures, and call center impersonation, where they pose as legitimate customers to extract information or gain access, is on the rise. Additionally, the purchase of stolen credentials on the dark web provides fraudsters with the tools they need to execute these attacks.
Check out some industry-specific fraud examples and learn how they can damage businesses and drive clients to competitors.
In the retail sector, fraudsters often target online stores and e-commerce platforms to exploit saved payment methods and loyalty programs. Techniques such as account takeover (ATO) and synthetic identity fraud are prevalent. Fraudsters use stolen credentials to log in to customer accounts, make unauthorized purchases and redeem loyalty points. The impact on retailers includes serious financial loss, damaged brand reputation and diminished customer trust, which may lead to losing loyal customers and make it harder to attract new ones.
Consider a recent example where the membership loyalty program of a global airline became the target of a widespread ATO campaign. Fraudsters accessed legitimate accounts and used accumulated miles and points to book flights and hotel rooms. This direct usage of stolen loyalty points caused significant financial and reputational damage to the airline, highlighting the critical need for robust security measures. Additionally, fraudsters often exploit weaknesses in booking systems using stolen credit card information to purchase tickets, which they later resell on the illegal market.
Telecommunications companies are increasingly targeted by fraudsters due to the high value of their services and customer data. Common tactics include SIM swapping, where fraudsters trick mobile carriers into transferring a victim’s phone number to a new SIM card. This allows them to intercept calls and messages, which may include MFA codes, leading to brand reputation harm, financial losses and compromised customer privacy and trust.
As shown, ATO fraud is increasingly targeting non-financial markets, and this also includes the entertainment industry. Fraudsters exploit vulnerabilities in customer accounts, using stolen credentials to purchase tickets for movies, concerts and festivals. They can then resell these tickets at inflated prices or request refunds after transferring the tickets to other accounts. This highlights the critical need for robust ATO and general fraud prevention measures to safeguard customer accounts and business integrity.
The risks of being hit by such threats are severe and multifaceted. Financial losses can be significant as fraudulent activities drain resources. Compromised customer trust can lead to long-term damage to your brand’s reputation, while persistent fraud issues can drive customers away, resulting in a decrease in business and revenue.
Moreover, the overhead of managing fraud internally can be overwhelming. Instead of having to build and maintain a large team of fraud and security analysts, organizations can leverage advanced technologies and vendor solutions to offload this burden. By implementing the right detection engine, businesses can streamline their operations, reduce costs and focus on their core activities. It’s crucial for organizations to recognize the evolving landscape of digital fraud and adapt their security measures accordingly. By doing so, you can protect your business and maintain customer trust.
The Mosaic Platform is uniquely positioned to combat these threats. It fuses customer identity management, identity verification and fraud prevention into a single, AI-powered, modular solution. This unified approach ensures comprehensive security for the entire customer journey.
Transmit Security offers an all-encompassing platform driven by leading identity orchestration (which we invented). It unifies fraud prevention, a complete set of authentication methods, authorization, identity verification and identity management. In addition, our platform-native fraud detection engine leverages hundreds of detection mechanisms, analyzing signals within the context of threat intelligence, application flows, individual behaviors and devices. This unified approach ensures robust protection and risk-based authentication and authorization, all while maintaining an exceptional customer experience.
Mosaic’s AI-powered intelligence offers real-time adaptability to new threats. Context-aware intelligence automates decision-making, dynamically adapting customer journeys to mitigate risk or elevate trust. This capability is unique to Transmit Security, providing laser-accurate decisioning across all fraud prevention and identity security functions.
Our platform also includes a no-code, drag-and-drop journey builder that allows anyone — not just developers — to build, test, and deploy customer journeys. With built-in case management tools, dynamic fraud rules and advanced data analytics, businesses can streamline cross-functional tasks, expedite time to market and gain instant insights into customers, risk events and attack patterns.
Another one of Mosaic’s standout features is its consumption-based pricing model. Organizations only pay for the services they need and use, avoiding the cost of underutilized technologies priced on monthly active users (MAUs). This flexible pricing ensures that businesses can scale their security measures without incurring unnecessary expenses.
Our platform’s architecture is designed to support the most demanding environments. Its active-active multi-cloud presence runs simultaneously in GCP, AWS and Azure, ensuring business continuity and resilience. Whether hosted in our secure cloud or self-hosted by your cloud provider, Mosaic services have been deployed successfully at large global organizations, supporting hundreds of millions of customers.
Security is integrated into every stage of Mosaic’s operations. The platform employs secure coding practices and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) to test for vulnerabilities before deployment. Additionally, our automated anomaly detection and trend analyses identify unusual patterns and predict potential threats. Allied to our embedded API and mobile app security measures, our AI-powered security approach protects your valuable assets against any kind of unauthorized access, ensuring data integrity and safeguarding your business.
In the face of increasingly sophisticated digital threats, it is imperative for organizations to take proactive security measures. The Mosaic Platform by Transmit Security provides the resiliency, agility and scale required to protect your organization and customers. By adopting the Mosaic Platform, you ensure a secure and seamless customer experience, safeguarding your organization against fraud.Don’t let fraudsters stop you from growing your business and loyalty programs. Contact Transmit Security today to learn how we can help you protect your business and customers.
