Preventing Data Loss in a World of Industrialized Hacking

Posted by Lauren Ellis on October 6th, 2014

Every year billions of dollars are lost due to financial fraud and digital fraud has become one of the target markets for fraudsters. The best weapon for today’s business environment is big data and analytics supporting a robust data loss prevention program.

The digital world has made business transactions faster and easier, and has had an incredibly positive effect on commerce globally; however, fraud is increasing almost as fast as the technology. Here are some figures that tell the story:

• The FBI reports that non-health related insurance fraud exceeds $40 billion annually.
• According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, $3.5 billion is lost annually due to financial crimes and fraud.
• The Bureau of Justice Statistics declares that credit card identity theft comes in at $25 billion according to a 2012 report.
• The health care sector alone reports an estimated $80 billion per year in losses according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

For industries that are data-intensive such as Government, Healthcare and Financial Services, fraud is an ever-present danger that costs significant amounts of capital. Large organizations deal with huge deposits of data that mask fraud because of the complex and insurmountable amount of data that is kept. Approximately five percent of revenue is lost due to fraud for an average company.

Cash losses are significant, but what of public perception? When a major data breach is announced, many long-term customers lose faith in an organization and will often no longer wish to do businesses out of fears that they may suffer a personal loss if the company’s system is hacked. Businesses have been quick to move to digital sales because of the promises of increased revenues and ease of doing business, but criminals have rushed to this platform quickly as well.

Intelligent criminals will always exist and they will always be seeking ways to breach security, so organizations need to work toward fighting fraud and preventing data loss. One of the best approaches is to be able to understand how the fraud takes place, and to be able to predict where and when it may occur. To do this, access to your data and analytics is the best place to start. The vast amount of data can be securely stored and accessed in a cloud data environment.

The cloud was originally designed for back-end infrastructures used by some large corporations, however with the prolific number of businesses conducting transactions digitally; the cloud has served many businesses in whole or in part in terms of their data storage. When it comes down to fraud prevention, big data and the cloud will allow organization to analyze consolidated sales data from across many different resources in one place. Mobile apps, store sales, website transactions and more can all be stored and accessed in the cloud in real time.

By using analytics in this way, an organization is able to identify patterns in sales based on parameters of time and geography that will allow them to spot any anomalies that may be fraud related. While this tracking is useful for tracking the success or failure of business campaigns it is also very useful for identifying fraudulent activity quickly so that it can be stopped before it becomes a large issue.

Fraud mitigation must also be approached from the inside of any particular organization. From upper management to the trainee level, a company must examine who stands to gain from fraud, how easy it is to commit fraud, and where the most incentive exists to commit fraud. This will involve the examination of each position within the company as well as the location and job type. In all cases, a company may be able to find business processes that allow fraud to infiltrate their business.

There are no quick solutions to fraud issues, but the proper utilization of big data and analytics in the cloud environment can provide an overall view of activities that can have a significant impact on an organization’s ability to identify and stop fraud in its tracks.


Author :
Lauren Ellis is a research analyst covering the technology industry’s top trends & topics, focusing on Cloud Security, Cloud Computing, Data Loss Prevention etc.,