If a mortgage company didn’t mandate homeowners insurance, would you have it? If states didn’t mandate car insurance, would you have it? If the federal government didn’t mandate health insurance, would you have it? For most business owners and managers, the answer is a big fat ‘YES’ to all the above as individuals have a desire to protect their investments and hard earned money as much as possible…after all, this premise is the whole reason insurance companies are in business today.
When it comes to business, shouldn’t business owners do all they can do protect both their investment (the business) and their customers? After all, there are no laws or regulations that mandate security cameras, alarms or even locks on doors…but most businesses have these physical security devices in place. Why should it take the passing of laws and regulation for a business to implement fraud prevention systems to protect unauthorized access to accounts?
In business, there is regard for the protection of customers and business assets, and this same regard should be implemented in the virtual environment. Just like the physical controls and processes prevent someone from entering a bank and withdrawing unauthorized funds, in the virtual environment tools such as KBA (knowledge based authentication) prevent unauthorized individuals from performing similar activities remotely. Admittedly, none of these tools can prevent 100% of fraudulent activity; but they represent the best and most effective options today (and tomorrow) to protect customers and business assets from fraudulent activity.
The Law has been slow to adapt to the rapidly changing digital world, and even where regulations address threats of fraud in the virtual environment the enforcement of those regulations is lagging. Businesses should not wait for regulations (or enforcement) to mandate protection against fraudulent activity; they need to apply the best tools available today.
