The explosion in online e-commerce has seen a corresponding growth in online fraud. A new solution is data fingerprinting, which harnesses big data analytics to deliver real-time identity verification.
The explosion in online e-commerce has been paralleled by a corresponding growth in online fraud. Confidence tricksters who once put their minds to creating the perfect sting are now using a new range of online tools to steal identities, hack databases and systems, and appropriate other people’s funds.
At the same time, the rise of social media has created a new world of trolls and fake identities, some relatively benign, others malicious in intent and action.
According to Felix Tan, a lecturer in the school of information systems, technology and management at UNSW Business School, fraudsters are having some success in this technology race.
“The same type of technologies the banks and IT companies can use to overcome fraud are accessible to the fraudsters themselves, so in some cases, the fraudsters have shown that, for now anyway, they are a step ahead,” Tan says.
There have been some innovative technological responses to online fraud, and one of them is the subject of a recent case study by Tan and UNSW Business School colleagues Daniel Cheung and Zixiu Guo.
The three academics have been looking at the “data fingerprinting” solution developed by Irish vendor Trustev, which harnesses the power of big data to deliver real-time online identity verification.
“With traditional fingerprinting, the impact of skin friction ridges could be used to match personal identity but the concept [has been] extended to online identity verification,” the authors say.
Instead of validating a credit card number, Trustev focuses on validating the individual making the transaction, not just the payment method. Trustev’s approach is to make sure that the person making the payment, or posting a comment, is who they say they are.
Read the full story at UNSW's Business Think.