Frontline Fraud Defense

In the context of cybersecurity, "frontline fraud defense" refers to the initial and most direct set of security measures and human vigilance that an organization or individual uses to prevent fraud. It's the first line of defense that directly intercepts or flags suspicious activity before it can cause financial or data loss. This is often a combination of technology and well-trained personnel.

Key Components of Frontline Fraud Defense

• Technological Controls: These are automated systems designed to screen for fraud in real-time. Examples include:

  • Email filters and security software: These tools are at the forefront of defense against email-based threats, such as phishing and business email compromise (BEC). They analyze emails for signs of malicious intent and block them before they reach a user's inbox.

  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA): MFA adds an extra layer of security beyond a password, making it much harder for attackers to gain unauthorized access to an account, even if they have stolen credentials. It is a key tool in preventing account takeover fraud.

  • Advanced fraud detection tools: Tools that use machine learning and AI to analyze transaction patterns and identify anomalies can flag suspicious activity on bank statements and other financial records. This is particularly important for spotting fraud that might be too subtle for a human to notice.

• Human Vigilance and Training: People are often the ultimate frontline defenders. A well-trained workforce can recognize and respond to threats that automated systems might miss. Key human defenses include:

  • Employee education: Training employees to spot red flags in emails, such as unusual sender addresses, poor grammar, or urgent requests, is a critical component of defense.

  • "Trust but verify" mindset: Employees, especially in departments such as accounting, are encouraged to independently verify any unusual requests—such as changes in payment instructions—through a separate channel or with a known contact.

  • Proactive behavior: Frontline staff, particularly in financial institutions, are trained to identify red flags associated with scams, such as counterfeit checks or wire transfer fraud, during customer interactions.

Frontline fraud defense is about proactive maintenance, combining technology and human effort to prevent issues before they arise. While no single defense is foolproof, a multi-layered approach ensures that multiple opportunities exist to stop a scam at its initial stage.

ThreatNG helps an organization establish a frontline fraud defense by providing a comprehensive, outside-in view of its external attack surface. It identifies and assesses vulnerabilities that a fraudster could exploit, allowing an organization to fix them before an attack is launched.

External Discovery and Assessment

ThreatNG's External Discovery is the initial step in building a frontline defense. It identifies all of an organization's public-facing digital assets without needing internal access. This process is crucial because it identifies forgotten or unknown assets that could serve as a point of entry for a scam.

ThreatNG's detailed assessments then highlight specific risks that are directly relevant to a frontline defense:

• BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This assessment is a core part of protecting a company from common email-based scams. ThreatNG identifies the risk of business email compromise and phishing by analyzing Domain Intelligence (including Domain Name Permutations), Email Intelligence (which looks at email security presence and format prediction), and Dark Web Presence (for compromised credentials). For instance, ThreatNG might find a domain like mycompany-payments.net (a slight misspelling of the company's domain) that a scammer could use to launch a phishing campaign.

• Mobile App Exposure: It evaluates an organization's mobile apps to identify exposed credentials, such as an Amazon AWS Access Key ID or Stripe API Key, that could be used to facilitate fraud.

• Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This is a direct measure of an organization's frontline defense. It's determined by looking for exposed sensitive ports, exposed private IPs, known vulnerabilities, and compromised credentials found on the dark web.

Reporting and Continuous Monitoring

ThreatNG's reporting capabilities are vital for empowering a frontline defense. Reports are provided in various formats, including Executive and Technical, with clear risk levels (High, Medium, Low) and recommendations for mitigation. This helps a frontline team—whether it's IT security or a fraud department—quickly understand and act on the most critical threats.

The platform's continuous monitoring of an organization’s external attack surface and digital risk ensures that the frontline defense is always current. It identifies new threats, such as recently registered phishing domains, as soon as they appear, allowing for a quick response.

Investigation Modules

ThreatNG's investigation modules provide the detailed intelligence needed to combat fraud at the frontline.

• Domain Intelligence: This module is key to identifying brand impersonation and phishing scams. It discovers and groups Domain Name Permutations. For example, a company with the domain mycompany.com might find that a fraudster has registered mycompany-login.com or mycompany-payments.com with the intent to scam customers.

• Sensitive Code Exposure: This module scans public code repositories to find leaked secrets. For instance, if an employee accidentally commits a file with a GitHub Access Token, ThreatNG would see it, allowing the organization to secure the token and prevent it from being used in an attack.

• Dark Web Presence: This module monitors for compromised credentials, providing a critical early warning that employee accounts may be vulnerable to account takeover.

Intelligence Repositories

ThreatNG's DarCache intelligence repositories provide the data that powers its frontline defense capabilities.

• DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials): This repository is a database of usernames and emails that have been compromised in data breaches. By continuously monitoring this, an organization's frontline defense can proactively force password resets for compromised accounts, preventing them from being used in scams.

• DarCache Vulnerability: This repository provides data on known vulnerabilities and their real-world exploitability, helping an organization prioritize patching efforts on the most urgent threats. It includes information from EPSS and KEV, which helps determine the likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited in the near future.

Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG can work with complementary solutions to fortify a frontline defense. For example, suppose ThreatNG’s Domain Intelligence module identifies a fraudulent domain being used for phishing. In that case, this information can be sent to an Email Security Gateway to block emails originating from that domain automatically.

Similarly, if ThreatNG's Dark Web Presence module identifies compromised credentials, that intelligence can be sent to an Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution. The IAM solution can then force a password reset and enable multifactor authentication (MFA) on the compromised account, preventing a fraudster from using the stolen credentials to gain access. This synergy between ThreatNG's external monitoring and the IAM's internal control creates a stronger defense.