Fraud Detection Now: A 2020 Retrospective

This year has been an intriguing one in the fraud management landscape, particularly as the effects of a global pandemic have underscored the need for proactive fraud detection. As conditions for an increase in fraud ripened seemingly overnight, organizations found themselves fighting more battles and recognizing just how quickly fraud attack techniques can evolve.

Moving forward, it’s clear that organizations not only take precautions against known threats and fraud attacks but also proactively take steps to prepare for the unknown. Uncertainty is to be expected and anticipated. 

In 2020, we made significant progress against this mission and in our vision to make protection accessible to all businesses to stay ahead of digital threats. 

Promoting Machine Learning for Proactive Fraud Prevention

DataVisor’s mission is and has always been to help organizations prepare for the unknown and to be resilient, agile, and able to adapt to constantly evolving circumstances. Adopting this proactive mindset enables organizations to not only protect themselves and the customers they serve, but also to seize opportunities to scale and grow.

We’ve championed the adoption of Unsupervised Machine Learning (UML) to help identify known and unknown threats in real time across all data points and channels. Despite the common misconceptions about UML, it continues to prove effective in detecting unknown threats with high accuracy, fewer false positives, and without extensive data training. It has helped organizations realize ROI from day one by enabling fraud teams to take fast action against new and evolving fraud attacks with speed and confidence.

This year, Gartner recognized DataVisor as a Gartner Cool Vendor in identity and asset management and fraud detection. In the report, Gartner commends the DataVisor transformational approach to fraud management, stating: “DataVisor challenges the orthodox approach to using ML for fraud detection, using unsupervised ML to decrease time to value and improve the ability to detect emerging fraud trends.”

We were also named a leader in Marketscape Report for Enterprise Fraud Prevention by IDC based on its annual banking assessment. According to IDC, “DataVisor’s proprietary UML dynamically analyzes accounts and clusters, which has enabled its customers to identify fraudulent activity quicker and with more accuracy than their legacy fraud applications. Customers have noted a less than 1% false positive rate for use cases in which the DataVisor application has been deployed.”

This recognition came at a critical time when financial institutions are facing unpredictable fraud in the rapidly changing digital banking landscape. According to DataVisor’s proprietary research conducted during the first few months of pandemic, transaction fraud doubled and ATO attempts increased by 20% with a 40% increase in new account fraud.

DataVisor’s Evolution as Comprehensive Fraud Detection Platform

The increase in fraud in 2020 spurred by the global pandemic has given DataVisor more insight into how and where fraud occurs and how organizations need to ensure a 360-degree defense. 

We have now realized that addressing known threats is no longer sufficient and single threaded layered solutions are no longer effective. We’ve used this knowledge to progress toward a more comprehensive, multi-layered approach to fraud protection. Our platform enables end-users to choose from specific point solutions or a full end-to-end fraud prevention solution that offers holistic, proactive fraud detection in its most advanced form today.

The Future of Fraud Detection

We are confident that the advancements and contributions to fraud prevention DataVisor has made in 2020 show great promise as we move into 2021. The future of proactive fraud detection is bright as DataVisor continues to innovate in the space and offer leading-edge technology to our customers to help them keep their customers safe at every step of their journey.