By Sundeep Tengur, Senior Business Solutions Manager, SAS

Goodwill is all around us during the Christmas season, but eager Christmas shoppers must stay wary to avoid falling prey to a Grinch. Suspect links and less-than-honest vendors are finding their way to millions of online shoppers, and disappearing with their money.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for those who are out to commit identity theft. Up to 8% of Christmas shoppers have been hit by identity fraud, and 43% have had their identities stolen while shopping online.

Each year, companies lose an estimated 5% of their revenue to fraud, much of this being stolen during the lucrative Christmas season. Nonetheless, all businesses have the ability to keep themselves and their customers safe. To succeed, they need a plan to predict threats and monitor cybercrime trends. Crucially, this plan must be underpinned by the best in fraud-beating technology.

Authenticating identities with data-driven tech is the key to stopping fraudsters in their tracks, before they have the chance to put a dampener on the season for businesses and customers alike. Analytics really can save Christmas!

1. Understand the behavior of genuine customers

As e-commerce has grown in size and importance, organizations are waking up to the fact that the digital identities customers use to shop online are highly malleable and open to abuse.

The problem is that crucial authentication decisions are too often made based on incomplete insight. This is because many organizations only collect and analyse some of the data that’s on offer.

If you don’t consider every possibility you’re only leaving blind spots…