University Breach Rasises Questions About Fraud Prevention

There are several news articles in today's press that remind us all of the damage and cost of not having the right security defenses in place. A study by the National Fraud Authority as reported in The Register claims that the UK loses $4.13B to Identity Fraud each year. According to the report the average theft results in $1530 in benefit to the thief. In these tough economic times, this is a dramatic drain on scarce resources and should underline why business should ensure they have the right fraud prevention and access management strategy in place to protect their customers.

The second article has to do with the recent breech at the University of North Florida had a breech which compromised over 100 thousand identities. Universities continue to struggle with identity security with a number of breeches over the last 5 years which have hit the headlines. The University has unique challenges with the number of students/identities that turn-over year quarter or semester. In some cases this is close to 25% per quarter or year. In addition, the students in some computer labs are inquisitive and experimenting with the latest hacks challenging even the toughest security measures. Ask any Network Admin at a major university about application and network security and you will hear some amazing stories. In some cases, way more exciting than corporate network security. However, this is a side-topic for another blog entry sometime.

The key to ensuring that you have the right level of protection is adding an additional layer of security and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager is a great solution for this purpose. Ensuring you have tools that allow for real-time response to rules you define on access helps prevent unauthorized access to applications and network resources. In addition, you can use features like One-Time Password to layer authentication security on key resources to ensure you combine something you know with something you have to improve security. Here is a quick intro to how Oracle Adaptive Access Manager can help.