Mastercard's Early Detection System provides issuers with advanced alerts for cards and accounts at a heightened risk of fraudulent use based on exposure in security incidents, such as the Equifax breach.
It can take as little as nine minutes for hackers to use stolen data posted to the dark web, according to Mastercard. Knowing that not all compromised accounts become fraud casualties and every second counts, Mastercard developed Early Detection System to help financial institutions act faster, thus preempting more serious attacks.
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 issuer with a quantification of the level of risk. The issuer then uses the level of risk to more accurately prioritize what action to take, from monitoring transactions more closely to proactively issuing a replacement card.
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"Knowledge is power, and this service helps issuers act significantly faster and with greater precision to stop potential fraud before it occurs," Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard said. "Our 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."
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 tested prior to fraud use, 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 potentially 6 to 18 months ahead of traditional alerts.
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Roy Urrico
Roy W. Urrico specializes in articles about financial technology and services for Credit Union Times, as well as ghostwriting, copywriting, and case studies. Also: writer/editor of a semi-annual newsletter for Association for Financial Technology since 1997 and history projects funded by the U.S Interior Department, National Park Service and Warren County (N.Y.).
