Due to an unfortunate New Years Eve accident involving a clown car, an anvil, and a rubber duck, you have lost your memory. In your amnesia you can't even recall what fraud fighting is. How tragic...
What is fraud? What is fighting? What is fraud fighting? Poor you has no clue because your mind has been Swiss cheesed. You don't know your name and have no recollection of anything. It is important that you remember.
Let's go basic at first to maybe jog your mind, Jason Bourne. Fraud = bad. Fraud is when people lie, cheat, and steal. It isn't quite the same as theft, but it is close. It is using deceit for illegal or unethical gain.
How can we describe fighting to you? This should be simple, whatever your name may be, Professor Lockhart. Put your hand in a fist. Good, very good. Now, see that guy with the big muscles standing over there? Go punch him.
Perhaps that wasn't the best idea. Here is a bag of frozen peas to put on your eye. He really walloped you. But now you get the point of fighting, right?
Let's hope that memory kicks in soon because things are going to get more complicated. Fraud fighting is working against those attempting and committing fraud, and it comes in many forms. The different ways that people fight fraud come together to stop the illegal activity.
Intelligence and Threat Analysis
It is essential that fraud fighters have information on the trends and attacks going on. Assessing the fraud risks out there help to develop the right processes and tools for anti-fraud efforts. Information can be internal or external, coming from anywhere in the fraud lifecycle. The more information being relayed, the better the fight.
Strategy and Analytics
As risks are identified, there are groups of people who ponder the best tools, rules, strategies, and processes to develop. Many have PHDs. They like data (sometimes even more than the fraud they fight). They are all about using data to equip an organization to smash fraud in the face harder than the muscle man hit you.
Detection and Prevention
Before you lost your memory, you were a fraud analyst in a fraud Detection team at a bank. You were the best analyst there was. Curse that clown car, anvil, and rubber duck. Your job was to analyze banking activity to assess fraud risk. If fraud risk was present, you would take action. That was your piece of the pie and you did it well... remember, won't you? Your work was fast paced, spanning different types of fraud risk and utilizing multiple solutions.
Investigation
Before you completely blanked out, your analysis would have been very useful in opening a case and having an investigation completed. By establishing and amassing all the facts, further actions can be taken by investigators. These investigators often wear Herringbone hats use magnifying glasses while smoking pipes...I'm kidding there, Sam Beckett. Seriously though, Sherlock Holmes would be proud of these people whether they smoke pipes or not.
Recovery
Are you any closer to recollection or recovering your memory of fraud fighting? Recovery is a piece of it and can mean a few things. The company or organization you work for may be at a loss. Or a customer who has lost money needs to recover their funds. Recovery is an important step towards the end of a fraud event.
Oversight and Governance
Seem like a lot to manage? It definitely can be. In addition to all of the direct fraud fighting, you also have the things behind the scenes which require oversight and governance. Processes, procedures, and various councils which need to occur plus more. Your organization must ensure it is aligned with many laws and regulations. The practices need to balance fraud risk and customer experience. Of course, those committing fraud do not care about this. Fraudsters have no concept of governance and require no oversight.
Training, Education, and Awareness
Alright Wolverine, one last thing to mention related to fraud fighting...okay it is three things but, they are all related. Training, education, and awareness on fraud risk is extremely important. It helps to empower others in the organization to catch fraud, even when they are not in a fraud shop. Ensuring the organization's customer base is aware of fraud also prevents it from occurring.
Maybe this has helped you piece together your identity and memory as a fraud fighter. We need you back, we need you in the fight!