NICE Real-Time Solution in not Nice Contact Center Fraudsters

In case you missed one of the big and certainly unwelcomed trends of 2014 was that fraudsters increased their focus on contact centers as a vector of vulnerability extremely ripe for exploitation.  Indeed, call-based contact center fraudulent activities—used for taking over accounts, stealing identities, and a host of other nefarious acts—has become a lucrative business for the bad guys worth billions of dollars. In fact, global identity theft alone has been estimated by security firm McAfee (News - Alert) to have cost over $500 billion a year.

As a result, stopping them has become a top priority of contact center administrators and their IT organizations not just because of the money lost but also because of the trust lost and damage to enterprises’ brands.

The trick in mitigation of the risks of contact center fraud starts with early detection of fraudsters when they call.  The realities are as with all security challenges, the answer is that when it comes to protection it starts with detection and the sooner the better is the goal.  It is for this reason that the announcement from NICE Systems of the launch of its Real-Time Fraud Prevention solution should capture more than a bit of interest. 

The solution enables contact centers to detect and prevent fraud in real time using voice biometrics and both speech and desktop analytics. The solution instantly identifies 90 percent of fraudulent callers in the first few seconds of a call, enabling organizations to quickly investigate unauthorized transactions before they are completed.

"Not only is the contact center a critical enabler to fraud schemes, it has suffered significantly from lack of investment in fraud prevention tools," said Shirley Inscoe, Senior Analyst, Aite Group. "That's because money doesn't often leave the building via the contact center. But without the contact center as an enabler, many fraud schemes would not be successful. Therefore, there is a real need in the market for solutions that stop fraud in real time via the voice channel."

NICE is promoting the benefits of its fraud prevention solution as not only providing rapid identification of bad actors but doing so with a light touch in terms of other contact center functions. It notes that: “This helps companies significantly reduce fraud losses, improve the operational efficiency of fraud investigation teams, and achieve higher retention rates by enhancing customer protection.”

What Real-Time Fraud Prevention solution is and how it works

This is a comprehensive solution that provides:  

• Multi-layered protection: by screening all interactions to detect suspicious activity using multiple modalities, such as voice biometrics, speech and desktop analytics, watch lists, and transactional data.
• Smart real-time decisioning: by detecting fraudulent transactions in real time and then guiding agents to take the next best action to expedite time-to-service and to appropriately handle high-risk interactions
• Enhanced customer experience: through a fast and frictionless engagement process which supports legitimate customers while accurately identifying and preventing fraudsters
• Holistic fraud risk management:  by protecting the enterprise from fraud attacks across all channels and by automatically aggregating and routing alerts with NICE Actimize's Enterprise Risk Case Manager

Here is how the solution works. The solution is powered by the NICE Engage Platform and uses advanced real-time streaming and analytics to check every incoming call against a fraudster watch list and detect if the caller is a known fraudster. If a call is determined to be high-risk, the agent is immediately informed and guided in real time to appropriately handle the interaction. All high-risk interactions are also sent for further investigation via the NICE Actimize Enterprise Risk Case Manager as part of the full fraud case management lifecycle.

In addition, NICE explains that the new solution complements NICE's Real-Time Authentication offering for fast voice-based authentication.

"NICE is committed to leading the market's adoption of real-time applications and capabilities that bring organizations significant business value," said Miki Migdal, President of the NICE Enterprise Product Group. "The NICE Real-Time Fraud Prevention solution leverages NICE's unique technology to deliver a solution that enables organizations to prevent fraudulent activity in real time, at the level of the contact center interaction."

There is an old saying in the U.S. that, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  Given what is at stake when fraudsters attack such a critical place for compromising systems with access to incredibly valuable information, having instant access to identify the good customers from the bad ones is about as mission critical as it gets.  While security professionals readily admit that no system is failsafe, decreasing the risks by the magnitude contact center fraud protection solutions can provide seems like much more than just and once of protection.