Published:
January 7, 2025
Reading time:
4 minute read
Written by:
Doriel Abrahams
Happy New Year! In 2025, I intend to take as much of my professional satisfaction as possible into my own hands by making five fraud-fighting New Year’s resolutions. If I share them with you, I figure I have a better chance of keeping them, so here they are.
Resolution #1: Occam’s Razor
“Occam’s Razor” is basically the principle that says that if there are multiple possible explanations for something, then all things being equal, you should prefer the simpler one. (I personally think of it as KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid!)
As a fraud analyst, I’m sometimes tempted to complicate things (just a little). I saw a t-shirt the other day that said, “I’m overthinking overthinking this,” and let’s just say it resonated. Fraud is so intricate and many-layered that it’s natural to look for complexity.
The thing is that sometimes, it really is exactly what you’re seeing. If you’re sure you see fraud, then it doesn’t matter how much pressure is coming from elsewhere for things to sound positive; you need to call fraud and investigate. If this looks just like the work of a group you’ve seen before, it probably is, so dig into that possibility first. That’s what I’m going to do this year.
Resolution #2: Love the Trees, Look at the Forest
I got into fraud fighting initially because I’m a total sucker for the details of the chase. I love spending way too long on a transaction that might be fraud but might be legitimate, working out exactly what the real story is.
The older and more experienced I get, though, the more I see the truth of what my first fraud prevention mentor told me: It’s great to love the trees, hang out with them, and sample individual transactions. But ultimately, you need to spend most of your time on the bigger picture — the trends, anomalies, and strategy.
It can be hard not to get lost down the rabbit hole, but this year, I’m going to manage.
Resolution #3: Invest in Community
For me, bar none, the standout highlight of 2024 has been attending Fraud Lab sessions. East Coast, West Coast, U.K., Europe — if there’s a Fraud Lab, I’ll try to get there. In terms of a wide perspective on fraud from diverse industries, best practices, hearing about challenges and success stories, and just the solidarity and encouragement you get from being around the people who get you, there’s nothing like it.
This year, I will try to find even more ways to connect with other fraud fighters and invest in the community that continues to give me so much. It’s a privilege to be in an industry where consulting with your company’s competitors isn’t just a good idea but the best idea because you’re all one big team working together against the same enemy.
Resolution #4: Work Smart to Get More Done
I’m going to prioritize strategies that give me time off from grunt work. AI is a threat when it’s in the hands of fraudsters, but it has huge potential to make legitimate folks more productive than they’ve ever been by freeing them to focus on the real, interesting work — instead of having to waste time on things like manual review, data entry, and so on.
When you automate the heavy lifting, you can invest in problem-solving at a much higher level with a lot more impact. I know how much time I save just by using Forter’s AI Insights in the Forter Data Studio — you simply put in a query or request in regular language, and it generates a custom dashboard for you. I’m going to look for ways to bring that kind of magic to more of my daily work.
Resolution #5: Get Everyone to the Table
I love fraud — that’s probably obvious by now. But I particularly love having an impact as a fraud fighter, and for that, I need to have a big (physical or virtual) table with payments, product, customer support, marketing, and more.
When different functions work together, everyone wins. The business makes more money, customers get a better experience that’s smoother and safer than it would have been, and risks are mitigated at every step. The only ones who lose out are the fraudsters since sites become much less easy to compromise, but I can sleep very soundly at night knowing that the fraudsters are struggling.
Bonus Resolution: Invest in Education
This isn’t a new resolution, so I’m including it as an extra. I’ve seen firsthand, more times than I can count, what a huge impact investing in education across an organization can have on fraud fighting.
If I had a cookie for every time I’ve heard a fraud fighter say something like, “No one in the org understands what I’m doing or why it matters. Why don’t they get it?!” I would have more cookies than even I could eat in a month. I used to do this, too, and it took a long time for me to realize that if that’s the problem, then it’s on me to fix it. With education, you can achieve the change you need.
My resolution this year is to try to provide resources for other fraud fighters to help them talk to other departments as well. Peers in other departments, managers, executives, customers — they’re all part of the picture, and you need to talk to them all differently. If you manage, it’s amazing what a difference it can make.
Those are my New Year’s fraud-fighting resolutions. If you have any resolutions in fighting fraud, reach out — I’d love to hear them!
Doriel Abrahams is the Principal Technologist at Forter and host of ‘What the Fraud?,’ where he monitors emerging trends in the fight against fraudsters, including new fraud rings, attacker MOs, rising technologies, etc. His mission is to provide digital commerce leaders with the latest risk intel so they can adapt and get ahead of what’s to come.