Türkiye İş Bankası Fraud Monitoring System
Technological advances and changes in user habits have brought about a transformation in the banking sector. At first, the sector moved from branch banking to phone banking and cash dispensers. By the late 90s, Internet branches had come into being. Finally, mobile banking became the trend by the end of the 2000s. Risks and threats in the banking sector have also transformed in this process, depending on the period and the preferred banking channel.
Today, transactions performed via Internet branch, cash dispensers and mobile banking channels account for 80% of İş Bankası’s banking transactions. Therefore, the bank launched its Fraud Monitoring System project in 2011, to monitor and report the risks and threats to these channels, and to prevent possible losses.
The first stage of the project revealed that the bank needed a system that can dynamically analyze all transactions in order to learn customers’ transactional behaviors, and then detect transactions that do not match these behavior patterns. After reviewing many fraud detection technologies that use behavioral monitoring methods, İş Bankası chose IHS Technology‘s Fraud Monitoring System.
Knowing that it would be a long-running process, İş Bankası and IHS Technology planned the project stages from scratch. At the first stage, they worked through the detection of customer behavior by banking channel. At the second stage, measures were taken to eliminate risks and threats, and internal processes were established. When the project was completed after 36 months, İş Bankası had the technology in hand that could learn each customer’s behavior when using Internet branch, cash dispenser, mobile applications including İŞ Cep, İŞ Wap and İŞ Pad, as well as phone banking and call center channels, and could detect abnormal behavior in transactions.
The Fraud Monitoring System uses real-time data mining algorithms and also analyzes customer’s cross-channel behavior patterns to detect abnormalities. The Fraud Monitoring System helps to monitor and control risks and threats that have arisen recently in the banking sector, including social engineering, fraud via malicious software, advanced malware attacks and card cloning.
Before the project, İş Bankası relied on the IT department for security-related software development. By the time the project was completed, they were able to carry out the necessary changes without the need for any IT resource, not only reducing the workload of the software team, but also gaining the capacity to meet security-related requests from the business unit.
” Ali Özdoğan, Deputy Manager, Security and Compatibility, Alternate Distribution Channels Division, İş Bankası expressed the following: “Both IHS Technology and Softtech resources have worked in complete harmony, and have profoundly contributed to the project’s birth. The project paid off much sooner than expected. As a narrow-scoped model of big data methodology, this project helped us gain experience in many ways. We now use it not only as a fraud monitoring system, but also as a tool to detect customers who try to abuse our banks’ products and services. The flexible nature of the solution allows us to take action against evolving risks and threats quickly and easily, giving us the whip hand over malevolent actors. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their efforts in this project.””