How to Improve Your Anti-Fraud Strategy with Runtime Threat Insights

In a previous blog on ThreatCast, we explored the importance of monitoring mobile app threat-specific data in building effective anti-fraud strategies. In this blog, we will explore three ways financial institutions can leverage the wealth of real-time runtime integrity violation data ThreatCast provides to improve anti-fraud strategies.

Key takeaways:

• ThreatCast enables financial institutions to improve fraud detection and mitigation strategies using the built-in, real-time alerts and webhook feature, allowing for immediate and informed response actions.
• By leveraging runtime threat data, institutions can better profile users, applying stricter security measures to high-risk individuals while offering seamless experiences to low-risk users.
• Collaborative use of ThreatCast data helps institutions identify broader fraud trends enabling a more proactive anti-fraud strategy to stay on top of the ever-evolving threat landscape.

More efficient fraud detection & prevention

ThreatCast has a wide range of capabilities that help detect and prevent fraud. Using the custom-alerts feature, financial institutions can automatically notify relevant team members (e.g., Incident Response Team) whenever runtime threats that require immediate attention occur on DexGuard and iXGuard-protected applications. Teams can more confidently take remedial actions thanks to the detailed information about the nature and context of the threat delivered through the tool. The webhook feature allows you to automate the severity categorization and correlation with other data sources by feeding this threat information straight into your existing SIEM platform.

These insights can then be used to dynamically adjust fraud detection rules in real-time, significantly reducing the time to respond. For instance, if ThreatCast detects that an app is running in a risky environment, such as a rooted or jailbroken device, this information can be immediately correlated with other data sources such as historical transaction patterns to adjust the transaction risk scores. These insights can also be used as grounds to trigger additional security measures such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) to ensure the legitimacy of the transaction. Similarly, signs of code tampering attempts can be leveraged as an additional basis for blocking high-risk transactions or triggering account suspension. These real-time adjustments can help prevent fraud without relying solely on static rules.

In addition to facilitating immediate response, ThreatCast data can be used for proactive fraud investigation and threat hunting. For example, if new or multiple instances of a specific threat type are detected (e.g., repackaging, code injection), the SIEM could be set to automatically pull logs, correlate data from other systems (e.g., transaction histories, network logs), and generate a comprehensive report for the investigation team to take action. This allows for a more proactive implementation of corrective as well as retroactive fraud defenses.

Enhanced user experience & threat actor profiling

Financial institutions can more accurately identify and monitor potential threat actors while maintaining the highest user experience using ThreatCast. Teams can leverage the runtime threat information gathered by ThreatCast to extract notable risk patterns that can be attributed to different user archetypes. For instance, “High-risk users” - those who frequently exhibit suspicious behavior or interact with an app from insecure environments - can be monitored more closely or evaluated further with additional security checks. Conversely, “Low-risk users” experience fewer security barriers. With more detailed profiles, organizations can also develop predictive models to anticipate and prevent fraud before it occurs. For example, suppose a user profile shows early signs of potential compromise (e.g. when the application is running from an emulator or a device with a debugger attached). In that case, institutions can set up their backend system to proactively flag the account for closer surveillance.

Threat intelligence & collaboration

The runtime threat data collected by ThreatCast can (and should) be shared across departments and/or with external partners to augment the overall threat intelligence efforts. By pooling and correlating ThreatCast data patterns, such as a surge in resigned/repackaged app distribution or coordinated attacks targeting specific vulnerabilities, with data from other sources, organizations can more confidently identify broader trends and emerging threats. Using ThreatCast's rich contextual metadata, financial institutions can filter and refine what they see to locate and track the popularity of the modified versions of their mobile banking apps as well as pinpoint the perpetrator. This information can then be shared with the responsible teams to easily understand the scale of the attack and take remedial actions to stop the threat from happening.

Conclusion

Incorporating real-time runtime threat data into your existing SIEM platform using monitoring tools like ThreatCast is more than just an added layer of security - it’s a transformative approach to fraud detection and prevention. ThreatCast’s ability to provide immediate, context-rich insights into runtime integrity violations enriches anti-fraud strategy and enables institutions to swiftly and more accurately detect and mitigate threats before they escalate. By leveraging this data, you can more dynamically adjust your detection and mitigation approach, build richer user segmentation profiles while ensuring optimal user experience, and collaborate more effectively across departments and with external partners. ThreatCast empowers organizations to ensure that they are not simply reacting to fraud, but more proactively preventing it. This allows them to stay ahead of the ever-evolving threat landscape, maintain the trust and security their customers expect, and remain compliant with security mandates and requirements.

Want to learn more about ThreatCast’s full capabilities? Contact us now