You Can’t Prevent Fraud with a Fragmented Approach—Try This Instead

Fragmented approaches to business can come in many forms. From standard procedure to development modeling, a business’s structure is a combination of many elements. Whether process or vision, a cohesive roadmap is always a good idea when it comes to improving efficiencies.

However, many enterprises completely overlook the need for a cohesive approach when it comes to fraud-prevention measures. A fragmented approach to fraud prevention puts an enterprise at risk for vulnerabilities, overlap and oversight. It creates an atmosphere where accountability and overall assessments are difficult to grasp.

Many times, security officers and IT managers may not even realize just how fragmented a system is until a breach has occurred.

Where Fragmentation Fails

An enterprise’s network is a complex ecosystem of dependencies and vulnerabilities. An action that takes place in one part of a network can have ramifications in another portion of the network. These correlations may seem unrelated upon first glance.

Only a cohesive, holistic plan that includes data streaming and ingestion can gauge the impact of a single action through observation, measurement, and action.

Enterprises that fail to utilize big data stream processing as a way to create baselines for activity are likely operating under a fragmented approach to analysis and prevention. Data that is collected from various points and placed into separate holding cells cannot be used to create system-wide baselines for normal activity. This type of data cannot be interpreted based on its placement next to other data sets that are being received.

Data becomes far less valuable if it cannot be translated into a single value that can be used to weigh all data equally. Many enterprises knowingly fragment their security measures by applying several security layers from different sources for the purpose of detecting specific types of threats. A full picture cannot be obtained unless all data is gathered and analyzed under one umbrella.

What Is the Solution?

A holistic approach to data ingestion, processing and analysis is the most secure route for fraud prevention. Data should be used to identify both large-scale threats and micro-level threats.

In addition, measures need to be in place to resolve issues when a breach occurs. Consistent data monitoring will reveal breaches in real time.  Fraud prevention systems must be able to capture a variety of different data types from various different incoming channels.

Each data type must be processed in a way that can unify it into a form that can be interpreted holistically. If human intervention is not possible, enterprises need automated systems for resolving breaches as they occur. Uniform processes allow for streamlined responses to fraud.