Strategies for Avoiding Unauthorized Account Access: Real-life Scenarios
Account takeovers have become a significant concern for companies in the digital age, with data breaches increasing by 72% in 2023 compared to 2021. To combat this rising threat, it's essential to deploy advanced anti-fraud systems that offer continuous monitoring, real-time alerts, biometric authentication, device intelligence, and more.
Effective Strategies for Preventing Account Takeovers
An effective strategy for preventing account takeovers involves a multi-layered approach that combines strong authentication, behavior monitoring, and advanced detection tools.
Implement Advanced Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Implementing advanced MFA is crucial to safeguard accounts. This can be achieved through phishing-resistant methods such as hardware security keys (FIDO2), authenticator apps, or biometrics, which go beyond simple SMS codes to block access even if credentials are stolen.
Enforce Strong Password Policies and Lockout Mechanisms
Enforcing strong password policies and lockout mechanisms is another essential measure. This requires unique, complex passwords and locking accounts after multiple failed login attempts to prevent brute-force attacks.
Deploy Behavior-Based Authentication and Behavioral Analytics
Establishing a baseline of normal user patterns and automatically flagging deviations such as logins from new devices, unusual locations, or suspicious in-session behaviors can help detect account takeovers.
Use Sophisticated Bot Detection and Credential Stuffing Prevention
Sophisticated bot detection and credential stuffing prevention solutions are necessary to identify and block automated attacks trying multiple credentials rapidly.
Employ Device Fingerprinting
Device fingerprinting, which tracks device and browser characteristics, can help detect unauthorized or suspicious access attempts.
Incorporate Dark Web Monitoring
Dark web monitoring can proactively discover leaked credentials early and prevent compromised accounts from being accessed.
Monitor Accounts Continuously
Continuous monitoring for unusual activity like multiple failed login attempts, dormant fraud, or transactions inconsistent with user profiles is also crucial.
Adopt Risk-Based Authentication
Risk-based authentication, which applies additional verification steps based on the risk level of a login attempt, can provide an extra layer of security.
Maintain an Incident Response Plan
Lastly, maintaining an incident response plan and conducting regular security audits and penetration testing can help identify weaknesses and prepare for breach handling.
Key Red Flags for Detecting Account Takeover
Some key red flags for detecting account takeovers include:
- Login attempts from new or unusual geographic locations or devices.
- Multiple failed login attempts followed by a sudden successful login.
- Behavioral anomalies such as unusual navigation patterns, excessive copying and pasting, or rapid switching between form fields.
- Dormant accounts that suddenly become active or show atypical behavior post-onboarding.
- Activity inconsistent with the customer's known history or profile, including unusual transaction amounts/structures.
- Multiple accounts accessed from the same device or suspicious IP addresses.
Preventing Account Takeovers with Sumsub
Sumsub's Fraud Prevention solution includes the tools mentioned above for account takeover prevention. With ready-to-use rules available from their rules library, setting up an account with Sumsub is straightforward. All alerts can be manually reviewed, with the option to forward them to other teams in a company. User activity can be seen in a single dashboard, and lists can be sorted and filtered as needed.
Protecting users during the onboarding stage alone is not enough; over 70% of fraud happens beyond the onboarding stage. Therefore, it's essential to protect the whole user journey. Sumsub's solution allows custom scenarios to be created according to local specifics and regulations.
In summary, combining strong authentication methods, real-time behavior monitoring, advanced bot detection, device fingerprinting, and proactive intelligence gathering (dark web scans), along with continuous vigilance and response readiness, forms the most effective defense against account takeover and detection of its red flags.
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