Fighting increasingly sophisticated forms of fraud and complyingwith increasingly stringent Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council guidelinescan be daunting challenges for credit unions, especially withmembers flocking to online and mobile services.

As part of a four-year strategic plan to strengthen security,The Summit Federal Credit Union in Rochester, N.Y., wassearching for a cost-effective, user-friendly solution to meetFFIEC guidelines and protect its 75,000 members, including about25,000 online banking users and 10,000 mobile users.

“Safeguarding our members' personal information andaccounts is a top priority, and we take all FFIEC guidelines veryseriously, which is why The Summit Federal Credit Union alwaysstrives for the highest level of security and believes strongly ininvesting to protect all members, whether they conduct transactionsin person, on the Internet or via a smartphone,” said Jeff Vieira,senior information technology manager for The Summit FCU.

Vieira said the $690 million New York credit union hasimplemented an automated transaction monitoring and anomalydetection solution from Mountain View, Calif.-based Guardian Analytics, a provider of behavior-based fraudprevention and SaaS solutions for more than 250 financialinstitutions.

Using Guardian Analytics' behavior-based anomaly detectionsolutions, FraudMAP Online and FraudMAP Mobile, The Summit FCU saidit now can monitor all user activity— from login to logout— acrossall online and mobile banking platforms. Not only does the systemtransparently and proactively protect members by identifyingsuspicious activity, Vieira said, it also simplifies the FFIECaudit process.

By monitoring transactions, customer behavior patterns, accountactivity and access to administrative functions, Vieira said, theCU can spot anomalies, halt suspicious transfers and pinpointsecurity vulnerabilities.

Now The Summit FCU proactively reaches out to members whensuspicious activity is identified that appears outside the member'snormal behavior – such as when an account is accessed from anunusual location or a bill pay is set up for a new payee.

“We now have a key strategic advantage over fraudsters –knowledge of members' behavior and the ability to detect anomalousactivities and unusual transactions at the individual accountholder level,” Vieira added.

“Plus, going through the FFIEC audits has been a lot easier.With Guardian Analytics' solutions such as FraudMAP in our corner,we know we're always prepared for audits. We can give auditors alive demonstration of FraudMAP or even provide logs, if needed.Meeting FFIEC guidelines and not having to worry about audits aregreat benefits of FraudMAP,” Vieira said.

Selecting the best solution wasn't easy, Vieira said, with somany new fraud prevention products and services entering themarketplace. Like other CUs of their size, he said, The Summit FCUneeded a solution with low operational impact that did not requireadditional resources to train employees or manage the system. Plus,the CU wanted to streamline the FFIEC audit process.

For The Summit FCU, he said, FraudMAP provides thesebenefits:

*Delivers an efficient means to conform to FFIEC guidance*Defends against the growing variety and sophistication of fraudthreats across multiple end points *Maintains an appropriatebalance between ease of use and providing a high level of fraudprevention *Protects all online and mobile banking userstransparently with no change to their banking process *Identifiessuspicious activity proactively – instead of waiting for afraudulent transfer to happen * Minimizes fraud risk on futuresolutions like P2P and remote deposit capture.

With Guardian, FFIEC audits have become “significantly easier”for Summit, Vieira said, and the credit union now has more time tofocus on launching new products and services such as P2P andelectronic check image deposits to further improve customerservice, efficiency and profitability.

Taking a proactive approach to security is a wise move,according to fraud prevention experts. Unfortunately, a recentstudy revealed that many CUs have not implemented adequatesafeguards such as transaction monitoring.

The vast majority of financial institutions surveyed for the2012 State of Cybercrime Study have a “bare minimum” ofsecurity precautions in place, according to ThreatMetrix, a San Jose, Calif.-based company focused on cybercrime.

To combat crime, experts say, credit unions must implementmultiple layers of security and solutions such as transactionmonitoring and anomaly detection.

“In today's world, it's not enough to look at the current attackvectors,” said Andreas Baumhof, chief technology officer forThreatMetrix. “The bad guys are moving very fast – we need to move towards moreof a holistic view of cybercrime and how to prevent it.”