Fraud Awareness Week: Meet Emerging Tech veteran Rutherford Wilson

While there are common fraud prevention best practices, every business is different, with unique threats that need to be addressed. Just like your business grows and changes over time, so do fraud threats, making adaptable solutions critical in ensuring the long-term security of your operations.

It’s imperative to understand the sophisticated nature of financial crime and deploy the most effective technology and processes that mitigate the risk. The risk of fraud is growing; in 2019, total identity fraud in the U.S. was estimated at $16.9 billion — and that is just one fraud type. There are at least 41 different types of fraud, and while not all might be applicable to each organization, it does indicate the variety and depth of fraud activities.

It’s also vital to monitor and analyze the unique patterns and behaviors that occur on your digital properties. Perhaps extra scrutiny on a certain type of account or transaction is warranted. Or, a new fraud technique is gaining traction and needs close watching. Maybe a regulatory alert on new legislation requires recalibrating the collection of personally identifiable information (PII data). Whatever the scenario, having systems that can collect numerous data points and quickly adapt helps deliver more holistic risk-mitigation solutions.

Trulioo VP of Emerging Tech, Rutherford Wilson, has over three decades of extensive experience analyzing fraud data and building effective risk products for innovative technology companies.

Rutherford Wilson, VP of Emerging Tech, Trulioo

Rutherford is focused on building and transforming innovative solutions that enable companies to optimize their identity verification processes, reduce friction, increase security, and establish and enhance trust with customers. We talked with Rutherford as part of our Fraud Awareness Week series (see our previous posts on fraud fighters at Bolt and Sony Interactive Entertainment, and ethical hacker, Ralph Echemendia).

When somebody asks for fraud prevention tips, what are your top three recommendations?

Think geographically. Fraud shows up everywhere, but different countries will have different tools to fight it.

Think analytically. Arm yourself with analytics so you can spot unusual trends and patterns.

Apply a risk profile. Understanding your customer’s risk during onboarding allows you to remove friction for less risky customers and apply friction for risky customers.

Identity verification — overrated or underrated?

Incomplete for a fraud solution. Identity Verification and Document Verification are required components for a fraud solution, but these need to be combined with a machine learning risk profile, address verification, payment instrument verification, and mobile number verification/MFA, among other tools, to reduce opportunities for fraudsters.

How do you find out about the latest and greatest in fraud prevention?

Understanding new fraud vectors is the best way to understand which prevention solutions are relevant. Every organization will have different challenges, so identify yours. Look to your analytics and metrics to find fraud patterns, as well as looking at what is happening at the industry level.

Fraud prevention professionals working together

Visit Identity Insights ­— the Trulioo Blog — during Fraud Awareness Week to learn what other experts are recommending. Meanwhile, there are many steps that you can take now:

• Get involved by using the hashtag #fraudweek
• Learn more with numerous videos, guides and reports
• Share our Fraud Prevention Tip Sheet (below)

Ten quick tips to fight fraud and protect your business

To help with education and promotion of best practices during Fraud Awareness Week, we’ve created this tip sheet with facts and tips from fraud industry experts like Rutherford.