Mastercard has just launched its Early Detection System, which offers issuers alerts for accounts that are at a higher risk.
Data theft is becoming an increasingly common occurrence, with more than 143 million identities compromised in an Equifax breach last month.
Early Detection System
The new security feature helps banks and other financial institutions to take quick action in preventing serious attacks on accounts.
Mastercard does this by making use of its network insights, predictive features and data sources—both internal and external.
Speed is Crucial
Facing payment fraud can be tough. There are many dangerous people out there waiting to steal your data.
To prevent this, the Early Detection system has been announced with speed being the critical factor for preventing identity theft and data breaches.
Stolen cards could be used for fraudulent activities anywhere from 10 minutes or less to 18 months once a breach occurs.
It is just a matter of minutes for such data to be posted on the dark web.
As such, every second of time is important.
The short time span can pose a major problem for the security industry, as people notice the breach only after some months.
The new technology will offer an effective solution for such issues.
Rolling Out Globally
According to the head of Mastercard’s Security Standards and Solutions team, the company has been working on the new alert system for a few years.
It has now been launched with two issuers and is available all over the world.
Gathering Intelligence
The system can identify whether a card is at risk and then sends the alert to the concerned bank, offering a number to reflect the risk level.
From there, the bank can easily make an informed decision regarding the action to be taken. Then, it starts monitoring the transactions on a closer level or even issues a new card to the cardholder.
The Early Detection System is able to identify data trading and whether or not someone has tested the card before using it for fraudulent purposes.
It is all about gathering intelligence and putting data in models for predicting a data breach before it occurs.
Mastercard is using a combination of technologies to generate the correct kind of data to make artificial intelligence work more effectively to prevent security breaches.
How It Works: Predictive Model
With the new system, issuers will receive alerts for their accounts long in advance—six months to about 18 months ahead of time when compared to conventional alerts.
It offers a layered system of approach for catching fraud when it occurs, resulting in the effective reduction of security risks.
The system allows institutions to identify the accounts that could be vulnerable to breaches.
The institutions issue a fair warning for these accounts. This is a predictive type of alert.
The models are able to check out various data sources to view authorization details, the flow of transaction, fraudulent activity, and so on.
It also monitors the dark web, as this is the primary area where cybercriminals indulge in trafficking of stolen card data and sell it to people who perform fraudulent transactions.
Saving Costs
Mastercard infers that only about three to five percent of compromised accounts actually end up being subjected to fraudulent activities.
A predictive feature could, therefore, be very useful and cut costs.
When an account is compromised and if a new card is issued to the user, it is seen that the cardholder reduces the account’s usage due to the fraud exposure.
Traditional Detection
Though the new Early Detection System feature has been added, Mastercard will continue with the conventional detection process at various points of purchase.
When the system notices increased exposure to risk within the transaction, the new feature will identify whether the risk is medium, high or very high in degree.
Better User Experience
It’s no secret that cybercriminals are advancing and honing their methods and abilities to steal and sell credit cards through the dark web.
There are even courses offered on the dark web that teaches people how to steal financial data and get away with it.
At the same time, though, security experts are also implementing new innovations to combat these attackers.
This increased knowledge gives financial institutions more power, and it helps the issuers to act quickly and more effectively in preventing an act of fraud even before it occurs.
Card issuers can now move proactively based on earlier hacked data.
This will help them offer a better experience to cardholders while also reducing the necessary costs.