ECtel Applies Social Networking to War on Fraud

There is now a serious side to social networking, thanks to the efforts of fraud and revenue management experts at ECtel who have opened their Integrated Revenue Management Alliance (IRMA) to the public.

While the road to this social networking site does not go through Facebook — ECtel built its own site — it has all the aspects of social networking, plus one. In addition to providing users with a platform to exchange and get access to information about fraud and revenue management, IRMA lets users of the company’s FraudView system upload and download controls they can apply to their fraud protection configurations.

ECtel developed the system about one year ago, but this month opened it for general use so customers and non-customers alike can share information on fraud, revenue assurance, credit and risk management, and service assurance.

“You don’t get the edge on your competition by being able to take more fraud than they can take,” said Hemy Fintsy, assistant vice president of marketing and business development at ECtel. “Fraud is a worldwide phenomenon and sharing benefits everyone.”

The IRMA provides a discussion forum where anyone can share information or ask questions of industry experts, some of which are ECtel experts while others are outside experts. The site also provides training material, hot tips and the social networks’ quality control invention: the scoring system.

“We added more aspects of social networking to encourage people to post information that can be scored by others,” Fintsy said. “People who post get more than just benefits for their company; they also get the recognition and respect of the industry.”

ECtel hopes IRMA will enhance the flow that turns ongoing data gathering done to combat the never-ending onslaught of fraud into actionable controls that can be incorporated into fraud systems. Only a small fraction of information and controls used to combat these issues industry-wide become part of a formal system.

The company has dedicated the resources necessary to make IRMA a viable and useful tool for the industry, such as a site manager and other dedicated resources, including outside experts. “The main difference between our site and other vendor forums is that we give you practical knowledge with controls you can download from the site,” Fintsy said.

According to an IBM Global Business Services study this year called “The Global CFO Study 2008,” access controls has been at the bottom of a list of risk management practices that is conducted enterprise-wide. Just more than 20 percent of enterprises felt they were very effective at mitigating risk by fully embedding access and process controls in their risk systems. Only about 12 percent felt they were moderate to effective in this area.