Over the past few years, many retailers have worked hard to offer an omnichannel shopping experience to their customers, allowing them to shop from wherever they are whenever they wish, and take advantage of myriad ways to purchase their goods. But with all the convenience and opportunities this new approach brings to retailers, it also introduces increased risks and opportunities for cybercriminals to capitalize on new technologies to defraud consumers.

Cybercrime has evolved over the past few years to keep pace with new developments in technology. Today, fraud is a true omnichannel business in itself, with communications and complex scams perpetrated through both electronic and physical channels. From phishing campaigns to man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks over insecure wireless networks, omnichannel fraud is in full swing this holiday season.

Uniting Organizational Silos to Address Omnichannel Threats

More often than not, organizations treat fraud and cybercrime differently, with separate teams, data sets and applications to address these threats. The most forward-thinking institutions are starting to put fraud, risk and cybercrime under the same leadership structure, employing similar tools, techniques and procedures to deal with these threats across all organizational channels.

Sharing data and information often reveals new patterns and networks. When cyber investigations consider the context of financial transactions, for example, security teams can deduce the tactics and motivations of threat actors much more efficiently.

Staying One Step Ahead of Omnichannel Fraud

The first step toward moving to an omnichannel security stance is as simple as bringing people together from different teams and disciplines to share information, both verbally and via a swivel chair approach.

Over time, additional tools and processes can be introduced to facilitate this collaboration, from intelligence repositories and link analysis tools to the collection and curation of data sources into a corporate data lake. This approach can also lead to the formalization and orchestration of incident response processes, either using incident response platforms or business process management tooling.

As the events of this year have proven, crime is evolving rapidly to take advantage of modern tools and techniques. You can and should assume that all channels in your organization are vulnerable to omnichannel fraud. It is a question of when — not if — you will deploy omnichannel security to protect yourself.

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