Internet fraud is a growing global problem. Worldwide estimates of the amounts involved run into trillions of dollars annually. In South Africa, losses due to fraud are estimated to be between R100 billion and R150 billion per year.
IT management expert, CA Southern Africa, has an existing suite of solutions that focus on fail-safe identity and access management (IAM), and this is now expanded with CA Technologies' recent acquisition of Arcot Systems and that company's range of security products.
“Identity management is essential for fraud prevention, but the security products we have now acquired take this to a whole new level,” says Ugan Naidoo, MD, Security, CA Southern Africa.
“Our existing IAM solutions cover identity and access, but the new suite of security software we now offer has even greater ability to combat fraud, whether that is from internal or external threats.
“This software can basically 'fingerprint' individual users and devices, which is critical for identifying threat and locating the person(s) responsible. It also monitors typical patterns of usage, activity, network location and immediately flags anything that looks suspicious.”
These warning flags can then be distributed to the appropriate people, departments or third parties, such as auditors or banks, for further investigation.
“This enables an immediate response to potential threats, rather than responding only after the fraud has happened,” says Naidoo.
South Africa is ranked number seven among the countries in the world with the highest levels of Internet fraud, according to overseas studies. Transactions from this country have been declined by Amazon and previously blacklisted by eBay as a result.
“The consumer aspect is only the tip of the iceberg,” says Naidoo. “Organisations large and small, in both private and public sectors, are equally at risk of massive financial losses and reputational damage.
“Security solutions that combat fraud face the same challenge as all other security systems: the owner has to get it right 24x7, while the internal or external perpetrator only has to get it right once.
“The ability of these new solutions to flag suspicious activity, combined with the extensive abilities of our existing IAM solutions, goes a long way towards making continuous, fail-safe protection a reality.”
While these security solutions are enterprise-level and typically deployed by Internet carriers, service providers and financial institutions, they are also available through the cloud.
“The uptake of virtualisation and cloud services might be seen to have increased the risk exposure,” says Naidoo. “A network without the right IT management solutions is equally or even more vulnerable when using the cloud.
“But the fraud management solutions are themselves available as cloud offerings and this means that even the smaller business can put in place the necessary security measures to prevent what is probably the biggest risk that any business faces.”
Ugan Naidoo will address the CA IT Management Symposium Africa 2011 Conference, to be held at the Sandton Convention Centre on 2 -3 February. Click here for more information.
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