Debunking the Top User Experience, Security, and Fraud Myths

I’ve always enjoyed Adam and Jamie’s approach on the Discovery Channel show MythBusters. One by one, Adam and Jamie have taken commonly held, but seldom challenged, beliefs and tested their validity. What I like most about the show is its scientific rigor. Adam and Jamie approach testing each belief as a controlled experiment - trying their hardest to get as accurate an evaluation as possible.


The same rigor should, in theory, be applied to many things in life, including security and fraud. Unfortunately, in practice, this is not the case as often as it should be. What specifically am I referring to?


In my discussions with enterprises, I’ve repeatedly encountered the same set of commonly held beliefs. I’m not sure that these beliefs would stand up to the MythBusters test. What surprises me most, though, is that as an industry, we seem so reluctant to subject commonly held beliefs to scientific rigor. If they’re true, they’ll pull through - the truth can take being questioned.


Here are a few of the commonly held beliefs I come across quite regularly:


There is no fraud problem here: I hear this one quite a bit. As I mentioned above, the truth has no problem being questioned. So you likely won’t be surprised that I begin politely questioning this one when I hear this statement. What does your fraud prevention workflow look like? What data sources do you review as part of your fraud program? What technologies do you have in place? How do you adapt to the changing tactics of attackers and fraudsters? What sources of intelligence do you rely on? Not surprisingly, if there aren’t a lot of substantive or thought out answers to these questions, it may mean that ..

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