Most businesses across the world suffer from cybercrime and data fraud once in a while. Frauds are not lethal for a business but also hamper their growth and damage their reputation among the customers. After all, nobody wants to give their data and money to an organization that gets attacked by a bunch of cyber criminals every now and then. Even if it happens once for your organization, the media doesn’t forget about it and it goes down in your history forever. 

A Look at the Astonishing Statistics

The worst part is that most organizations go months without even realizing that they are under an attack and the cybercriminal is feeding on their customer’s information like a parasite. Statistics suggest that data breaches exposed close to 4.1 billion records in the first half of 2019. Similarly, 62 percent of the businesses experienced phishing and social engineering attacks in 2018. A look at the internet and you will find never-ending statistics on how businesses were threatened and attacked, and all they could do was nothing.

Even though the fraud is stopped once identified, it already does significant damage by then. Imagine what happens if your customer’s credit card information is stolen from your organization. What reputation will you have in their eyes? The damage would be irreparable and cost you business, money, and customers. 

However, most organizations fail to realize the importance of completely securing their organizations from outside threats and vulnerabilities. They fail to use a proper tool, or even if they do, they fail to update it from time to time, which leads to an equal level of vulnerabilities. Similarly, they do not train their employees on how they can be exploited by external sources to gain insight into the organization. All these factors lead to a state where cybercriminals feel more confident than ever to attack an organization or fraud them in one way or the other.

Statistics suggest that 68 percent of the leaders felt that their cybersecurity needs are increasing while only 5 percent companies have all their folders adequately protected. Organizations and enterprises often fail to realize the importance of fraud protection amidst their need to carve a niche for themselves in the market. Be it financially motivated or espionage driven, frauds must be prevented by all companies and it must be their foremost priority. 

The Advancement in Technology and Frauds

The problem is that small and medium organizations are already struggling with implementing cutting edge technologies like artificial intelligence. They are still not completely at par with the wave of digitization, so the question of harnessing AI and ML doesn’t even fall into the picture. Amidst the struggle to cater to the need of the customers more effectively, most of them feel that they either have no resources left or have no time and money to invest in fraud protection. But in this process, what they fail to understand is that the fraudsters and cybercriminals out there are relishing on the best technology to stay undetected and enjoy the flavor of your organization to the fullest. In fact, statistics suggested that the smaller organizations had the highest targeted malicious email rate of 1 in 323.

The cyber attackers utilize technologies like AI and develop machine learning models that penetrate an organization’s network and keeps on sending back data packets with the information of the organization. Moreover, attackers have found CRMs as their new targets since they are centre for all customer interaction and information. They use this information to sell it to others or tamper with them causing the loss of reputation and money to the host organization. 

Fraud Protection and CRM

But, as we advance into the future, the scenario doesn’t have to stay the same. While small and medium organizations might not be able to invest in AI independently, they can still utilize it through their CRMs. And equipping CRMs with fraud protection programs is not just an option but a priority in today's times. Take for example the Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. It is powered by artificial intelligence and provides a special provision for fraud protection. 

The Dynamics 365 CRM can help protect e-commerce businesses, enterprises and their customers against frauds, which in turn helps drive the costs down, achieve higher revenue and improve the customer’s shopping experience. As an organization, if you’re still wondering why this matters to you, take a look at the following statistics. Out of the $3.9 trillion retail e-commerce in the world, experts observed that there were $ 90 billion fraud losses and $175 billion fraud-related costs. This leaves organizations with two options if they want to sustain themselves in the market- either take preventive measures and lower your costs or splurge all your investment into recovering from the damage of a fraud.

Adaptive AI Technology

One of the best qualities of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM is that it harnesses machine learning for fraud protection. By continuously learning from and adapting from patterns, it basically equips the fraud managers with tools to optimize fraud controls. The Virtual Fraud Analyst keeps a constant eye on your organization even when you’re asleep.

Fraud Protection Network

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 is a part of a completely connected network. This connected knowledge gives a broad awareness of the fraud activity going around the globe at any moment of time. At the same time, it keeps the security of your confidential information and your customer’s private information safe and secure. 

Transaction Acceptance Booster

When customers shop on your website, they use online payment methods. Every transaction that is submitted to the bank or issued for authorization undergoes a fraud assessment by respective banks or issues. These assessments at the bank level utilize data that is quite different from the data that organizations have access to on their merchant site. Dynamic 365 helps bridge the gap to increase the efficiency of fraud detections and reduce wrongful rejections. In other words, it shares transaction trust knowledge with the banks that helps boost the authorization rates.

Conclusion

Protection against fraud must be a priority for organizations as they enter the new year. No matter what type of business you’re in, if you want to keep serving your customers in the long run, you’ve gotta defend yourself against frauds. And while investing in AI from scratch might not seem like a feasible option if your budget is small, you can use AI-powered fraud protection CRMs to help you sail through smoothly.