Consumer fraud is dominating the cybercrime sector recently, making up a significant portion of the 880,000+ complaints made by the American people in 2023. The sophistication of modern scams leveraging deepfakes and AI renders traditional authenticity checks obsolete, necessitating a paradigm shift towards continuous security vigilance. That's where threat intelligence platforms come into play.

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What Is Consumer Fraud?

Consumer fraud is a deceptive practice causing financial loss either to an individual or to an organization. Common types include:

• Phishing: Fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information (passwords, credit card details) by disguising as trustworthy entities in electronic communication (emails, messages)
• Identity theft: The illegal use of someone else's personal information (name, social security number, etc.) to gain financial advantage, open accounts, or commit crimes.
• Account takeovers: Unauthorized access and control of an individual's online account (bank, email, social media) by cybercriminals, often for malicious purposes.
• Online shopping scams: These scams involve fraudulent online retailers or sellers who may offer counterfeit goods, fail to deliver purchased items, or steal consumers' payment information through fake websites or deceptive practices.
• Imposter scams: These scams involve fraudsters impersonating trusted figures like government officials (IRS), credit bureaus, banking institutions, tech support representatives, or even family members to deceive victims into providing personal information or money.

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Why Consumer Fraud Is So Difficult to Detect

The reliance on online transactions and digital identities creates a fertile ground for malicious actors. This constant connectivity mandates proactive security measures, including robust authentication, vigilant monitoring, and continuous consumer education.

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What Is Cyber Threat Intelligence?

This intelligence helps businesses and security professionals understand the evolving tactics of fraudsters, enabling them to proactively protect consumers by identifying and mitigating potential threats before they result in financial loss or identity theft. Essentially, it's about staying one step ahead of the scammers with some key techniques:

• Data collection and analysis adds context to any received intel so that it is actionable and relevant to an organization’s business vertical.
• Effective dissemination to pertinent teams can help add to the existing security posture by integrating analyzed data into existing SIEMs and network security devices.

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Benefits of Cyber Threat Intelligence for Battling Consumer Fraud

The primary measurable benefits of implementing CTI against consumer fraud include:

• Reduced chargeback rates: By identifying fraudulent activity before transactions are finalized, CTI helps stop unauthorized purchases from going through. This directly lowers the number of chargebacks your business has to process.
• Enhanced consumer trust: Proactive protection in against consumer fraud threats builds consumer faith in your business, leading to increased customer retention.
• Improved operational efficiency: Streamlined fraud prevention and effective threat intelligence automation allows you to optimize resource allocation and boost your company's efficiency.

Fine-Tuning IOC Collection Strategies

By meticulously tracking false positives (benign signals flagged as threats) and false negatives (missed threats), organizations gain critical data insights that allow for precise adjustments to IOC (indicators of compromise) collection strategies.

This helps ensure that threat intelligence focuses on the most relevant and accurate data, leading to a more efficient and effective fraud detection system.

Company-Wide Cost Savings

Effective threat intelligence can cut costs in several ways:

• Improved resource allocation: Evaluating the accuracy and reliability of both paid and open-source threat intelligence allows for informed decisions on resource allocation. By comparing the effectiveness of these sources, organizations can optimize their threat intelligence budget, potentially reducing costs while maintaining or improving the quality of their fraud detection capabilities.
• Fraud prevention: Effective threat intelligence proactively prevents fraud, thus minimizing financial losses.
• Reduced investigation durations: Faster detection and response times, enabled by accurate intelligence, reduce investigation durations and associated resource costs.

» Not convinced? Here are some more reasons your organization needs cyber threat intelligence

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Key Sources of Cyber Threat Intelligence



By combining the following diverse sources, organizations can create a comprehensive threat intelligence program that enables them to proactively defend against cyber fraud and protect their consumers.

• Dark Web monitoring: Specialized tools and techniques are used to monitor underground forums, marketplaces like BreachForums, and hidden websites where threat actors often communicate, share exploits, and sell stolen data. Monitoring dark web forums for discussions about new malware strains, zero-day exploits, or compromised credentials can provide early warnings of potential attacks.
• Data leak analysis: Analyzing leaked or compromised data from various sources (past breaches, public repositories, etc.) to identify sensitive information that could be exploited by attackers and reveal patterns in compromised credentials helps organizations strengthen authentication measures and protect user accounts.
• Phishing kits: Collecting and analyzing phishing kits (tools used to create phishing websites) helps you understand the latest website templates, email lures, or social engineering tactics used to deceive victims. This enables organizations to educate users and update security controls.
• Open-source intelligence (OSINT): Leveraging publicly available information (news articles, social media, security blogs, etc.) can gather insights into emerging threats, vulnerabilities, and attacker activity.
• Security information and event management (SIEM) systems: Analyzing log data from security devices (firewalls, intrusion detection systems, etc.) can help identify suspicious activity and potential indicators of compromise like unusual login attempts or network traffic patterns associated with malware.
• Vulnerability databases: Referencing publicly available databases like the National Vulnerability Database helps keep you informed about known vulnerabilities in software and hardware.
• Human intelligence (HUMINT): Human sources (security researchers, industry experts, law enforcement, etc.) can offer insights into attacker motivations, tactics, and targets. Engaging with security researchers and participating in industry events can provide valuable information about emerging threats and attacker trends.

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Catch Consumer Fraud Before the Breach With KELA

In the fight against ever-evolving consumer fraud, reactive measures simply aren't enough. Businesses need to adopt a proactive, intelligence-driven approach to protect consumers. This is where the power of comprehensive cyber threat intelligence shines.

KELA Cyber's unique capabilities include:

• Deep & dark web coverage with access to underground forums, marketplaces, and closed communities where threat actors congregate.
• Automated collection & analysis to gather and analyze vast amounts of data and integrate it into our Threat Actors Hub, providing real-time insights into cybercriminal activity.
• Connecting seemingly disparate data points, providing context that transforms raw data into actionable intelligence and enabling proactive identification of fraudsters and their schemes.
• Prioritizes the understanding of attacker motivations and methodologies, enabling organizations to predict and preempt fraudulent activities before they impact consumers.
• Integration & automation with existing security infrastructures, automating threat detection and response processes for efficient fraud mitigation.

In essence, leveraging robust threat intelligence platforms like KELA Cyber is not just a best practice; it's a necessity for any organization committed to protecting its consumers from the persistent and evolving threat of fraud.

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