Mastercard launch Early Detection System to combat card fraud after data breaches

It can now take as little as 9 minutes for stolen card and account data to be used via the dark web. With this in mind, Mastercard has announced the launch of Early Detection System, a new service that provides banks with a unique advanced alert for high-risk cards and accounts that are exposed in security incidents or data breaches.

Mastercard launch Early Detection System

Just last month, 143 million identities were reported as compromised in one data breach. Knowing that not all compromised accounts will be used fraudulently, and every second counts, Mastercard developed Early Detection System to help banks take action faster, and pre-empt more serious attacks.

In fact, of the 4.2 billion records stolen in 2016 only 3-5% of the details stolen are used fraudulently. This means that instead of asking Issuers and merchants to spend on replacing all the cards numbers that have been breached – a massive cost – the Early Detection System can very accurately predict risk scenarios and 17 times better at finding fraud that it allows Issuers to make confident decisions on which cards to replace from the breach.

Using Mastercard network insights, predictive capabilities and a combination of internal and external data sources, Early Detection System determines if a card or account is at risk and sends an alert to the relevant bank, quantifying the level of risk. The bank then uses the level of risk to more accurately prioritise what action to take – from monitoring transactions more closely to proactively issuing a replacement card.

“Knowledge is power, and this service helps banks act significantly faster and with greater precision to stop potential fraud before it occurs,” explained Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard, in an interview with PCM.

“Our card issuers can now proactively target the fraudulent activity resulting from previously breached or hacked data, helping them reduce costs and maintain the best possible cardholder experience –  the idea is to be more surgical about managing fraud.”

Early Detection System is available to issuers globally and captures all types of fraud across all transaction channels. The system identifies everything from active criminal trading of account data, to identification of cards being tested prior to being used for fraud, to account data that appears at-risk but without sufficient evidence to declare an Account Data Compromise event. This provides issuers with alerts on a much broader set of at-risk accounts at least 6 to 18 months ahead of traditional alerts.

Part of Security by Design

Mastercard has a long history of investing and innovating across multiple layers of technology – like EMV, tokenisation, physical and behavioural biometrics, and artificial intelligence – to protect every transaction.

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