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Risk Intelligence in Fraud Prevention: What It Is and Why It Matters

We are living in a mobile-first world where most services are primarily accessed online or through mobile apps. With nearly every industry having gone online in the last few years, the attack surface for fraudsters has widened. 

Fraudsters are also getting more sophisticated as technology advances. They are able to bypass safety and anti-fraud measures by using a number of malicious tools. This makes it difficult for companies to differentiate between fraudsters and genuine users.

Companies need to be proactive in implementing fraud prevention solutions on their platform to mitigate fraud. This is where risk intelligence comes in.  

What is risk intelligence in fraud prevention

Risk intelligence in fraud prevention provides businesses with actionable insights and signals they can leverage to determine how risky a device is in real-time. These signals allow trust and safety teams to immediately take action and stop fraudsters before they can do any damage. It also means that trust and safety teams don’t have to develop the expertise to detect malicious behavior and tools themselves, and can instead focus on proactively making decisions related to the level of risk on their platform.

Basic fraud prevention solutions may be overly aggressive and block devices with activities showing the slightest signs of fraud. But by harnessing risk intelligence, fraud teams have a more nuanced view and can calibrate their responses according to their specific risk tolerance. Risk intelligence is key for businesses to understand what is going on on their platform.

With risk intelligence, businesses identify fraud patterns and clusters, and conduct link analyses between devices and users to identify individual fraudsters and fraud syndicates. Some of the insights that risk intelligence provides include malicious tool detection, a trust score that assesses if a device session can be trusted, and pinpointing the exact moment users start exhibiting fraudulent behavior.  

For example, if a fraudster was using app cloners and bots to create multiple fake accounts to abuse a promo code over and over, risk intelligence would return, in real-time, that one device was being used to access thousands of accounts. It would also reveal that app cloners and bots were in use. This intelligence allows the company to make a decision on whether they want to block the device (and hence the multiple accounts) from their platform. 

Why risk intelligence is important

Risk intelligence allows companies to be proactive in the fight against fraud, helping make sure fraudsters are stopped before they can do any damage. One bad experience on a platform can break trust and cause a user to switch to a competitor. 

Actionable risk intelligence also allows online businesses to trust their users. If an online platform is hit by several fraud attacks, they may implement overly aggressive anti-fraud measures. This would cause friction and ruin the customer experience, threatening the growth of a genuine user base on their platform. But by leveraging risk intelligence, businesses are able to know which users to trust, and which users to keep out.

How SHIELD’s risk intelligence helps online businesses stop fraud

SHIELD’s risk intelligence helps online platforms stop fraud, build trust, and accelerate growth. Backed by AI and machine learning, SHIELD’s technology analyzes thousands of device, network, and behavioral data points to return intelligence on the potential risk on a company’s platform. 

The SHIELD ID, the global standard for device identification, is a key feature of SHIELD’s technology that detects when a device is linked to multiple accounts. On top of this, SHIELD’s Risk Indicators identify when and which malicious tools are in use to carry out fraud. These features ensure that companies are provided with real-time insights to eliminate any risk blind spots they may have. 

As fraudsters grow more sophisticated, it’s imperative that fraud prevention solutions stay one step ahead to stop fraudsters before they can do any damage. 

Learn more about how our risk intelligence can help your online business stop fraud and supercharge growth.