Best Practices for Addressing Fraud in the Public Sector

Cybersecurity, identity management and fraud are common and prevalent challenges across both the public sector and private sector. Industries as diverse as credit card issuers, retail banking, telecom service providers and eCommerce merchants, are faced with fraud threats ranging from first party fraud, commercial fraud, and identity theft. And, if for a second you happen to think that the problem is not nearly as bad as it seems, see below. The stats are telling.

• Fraud accounts for 19 percent of the $600B to $800B in waste in the U.S. healthcare system annually.
• Medical identity theft makes up about 3% of 8.3M overall victims of identity theft.
• In fiscal year 2012, the IRS’ specialized identity theft unit saw a 78% spike from last year in the number of ID theft cases submitted.
• In 2011, there were 431M adult victims of cybercrime in 24 countries.

The public sector can easily apply the same best practices found in the private sector for ID verification, fraud detection and risk mitigation. Below are just a few sure fire ways to get ahead of the problem:

• Implement a risk-based authentication process in citizen enrollment and account management programs
• Include the right depth and breadth of data through public and private sources to best identity proof businesses or citizens
• Offer real-time identity verification while ensuring security and privacy of information
• Provide a Knowledge Based Authentication (KBA) software solution that asks applicants approved random questions based on “out-of-wallet” data

What fraud best practices has your organization implemented? See what industry experts suggest as best practices for fraud protection by clicking here and stay tuned as I share more on this topic in future posts.