The benefits of the Internet of Things are only as strong as the weakest connected point. Having a plan in place to prevent fraud that businesses and consumers can use to manage risk and increase security when using Internet-enabled products, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT), is critical. Connected devices such as smartphones and tablets, and a tremendous number of consumer products — including cars, heart monitors and household appliances — are now connected to the Internet. Many of these connected products have weak security and controls, creating points of weakness in users’ critical private networks, systems, and data. Adam Fingersh, senior vice president and general manager of Experian’s fraud and identity business, shared several fraud prevention strategies that businesses and consumers can use to manage risk and increase security while using Internet-enabled products, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Please read all the security tips on our Insights blog and learn more about Experian’s Fraud and Identity business.
Experian DataLabs in North America and Gimbal, Inc., a leading mobile engagement and location intelligence solution, are working together on breakthrough data and advanced analytics experiments. By leveraging Gimbal’s suite of macro-location geofencing and micro-location beacons, these findings could help retailers offer instant credit to customers as soon as they walk into a store, as well as give creditors the ability to prequalify their customers on demand for car and home purchases based on the location of their mobile devices. “In our lab, we are working on what the future could look like when consumers walk into a retail store, shop for a car or find their dream house,” said Eric Haller, executive vice president, Experian Global DataLabs. “This alliance with Gimbal is one example of how Experian is on the forefront of innovation and doing good things with data.” Experian’s new state-of-the-art DataLabs facility in San Diego, Calif., is outfitted with Gimbal industry-leading beacons to help Experian’s data scientists use breakthrough experiments to analyze data and deliver greater competitive advantages. “We are excited to work with a global data-driven company like Experian to utilize the rich location data our solution creates,” said Brian Dunphy, senior vice president of business development at Gimbal. “Further, it is great to be part of a collaboration effort that could enable Experian’s clients to offer mobile instant credit and prequalification to their customers once they’ve opted in, further helping to make their customers’ journey much simpler by leveraging their mobile devices and smart applications enabled by the Gimbal platform.” Experian DataLabs is staffed by teams of Ph.D. scientists and applied research practitioners with expertise in advanced analytics and modeling, as well as other statistical methods. The labs provide access to Experian resources such as broad, secure consumer and commercial credit data and demographics, which can guide Experian clients in determining their approach. Projects often tackle high-dimensionality problems where computer science, applied mathematics and business acumen intersect to create solutions that can be implemented cost-effectively. Experian DataLabs operates globally with labs in San Diego, Calif.; London, England; and São Paulo, Brazil. To find out more about Experian’s data innovations and the Experian DataLabs, please visit https://www.experian.com/big-data/datalabs.html.
Originally published in MarTech Advisor. As technology increases, today’s consumer continues to demand and expect better service. According to recent Experian data, the biggest challenge for businesses over the next 24 months is increasing customer expectation. It has become more important than ever for marketers to be smarter, more personable, and more relevant than ever before. In order to not get beat by competition, brands need to deliver a personalized and seamless Omnichannel experience. Data will play a critical role in informing decisions and ensuring the customer experience is maximized. This requires you to move from push marketing to insight-driven response and prediction. Insight like time of day, past purchases, weather, location, devices and more make it possible to provide exceptional value through every interaction. But before we can begin focusing on activation, we need to make sure to step back to basic fundamental thinking and think about our customer journey. Identifying Your Customers We have always put customers front and center. The old way to identify customers used to involve past-looking exercises meant to inform future large-scale marketing decisions. We would focus on our best customers and pinpoint key moments in their brand experiences that may need improvement or redesign. In today’s world of customer-centricity, we have to move past the idea of a random sample customer journey. Instead, be ready to react to each unique touch point in a way that adds value and encourages further brand interactions. Today’s version of the customer journey map should cover each individual’s path of touch points, make contextual decisions at each subsequent interaction, and develop and automate the process at scale. With this approach, the unique path each customer has taken up until this moment can inform the next message or offer we deliver at a 1:1 level. This is where predictive analytics come into play. According to TDWI Research, the top five reasons why companies want to use predictive analytics are to predict trends, understand customers, improve business performance, drive strategic decision-making, and predict behavior. In order to truly identify each individual customer, a mix of transactional and behavioral data need to be incorporated into the predictive modeling. Linking Your Profiles Ninety-nine percent of companies believe achieving a single customer view is important to their business, but only 24 percent believe they have achieved it today. According to Experian Marketing Services’ 2015 Digital Marketer Report, the biggest barrier for marketers to achieve cross-channel success is data linkage. For instance, say you have a customer who does all their research online during the week and then over the weekend shops in a brick and motor store to actually make purchases. If brands aren’t identifying the customer as one profile, they are most likely spending too much energy and time on trying to get the digital profile to transact online. There are two ways to establish user identity across devices. The deterministic method relies on personally identifiable information (PII) to make devise matches when a person uses the same email address to log into an app and a website, thereby creating cross-device linkage. Probabilistic cross-device matching is achieved by algorithmically analyzing thousands of different anonymous data points including device type, operating system, location data associated with bid requests, time of day and a host of others to create statistical matches between devices. For example, if a phone, a tablet and a laptop connect to the same networks or Wi-Fi hotspots in the same places every weekday, it’s safe to surmise that all three devices belong to a specific commuter. And while deterministic matching seems like the better more exact solution, users don’t always stay logged in or use the same email address everywhere. That is why it is important to use a combination of these techniques and other supplemental data to ensure you have an accurate single-customer profile. Automating The Process Once we have achieved a clear vision of each customer, we can automate the whole process. The ability to deliver the right message to the right person at the right stage in his or her buying process has increased the speed to conversion. However, it is not as simple as set it and forget it. You need to constantly be adding great content and paying really close attention to what people are responding to. In addition, there is no substitution for a human component. Automation works most effectively when the right team is involved in processing and make sure that customers’ needs are actually being met. The customer journey is and has always been at the backbone of business success. Being able to identify what motivates a customer gives us the insight needed to make smart marketing and business decisions. Today’s technology gives us an easier and quicker means to that data, but it is how we use and manage that data to provide a memorable customer experience that really sets us apart. Marketers need to make sure that every touch is smarter, more personable, and relevant in order to excel and advance. Emad Georgy is the Senior VP of product development and product management at Experian Marketing Services. Follow Emad at @EmadGeorgy, and Experian Marketing Services at @ExperianMkt, on Twitter.
Today, we stand at the forefront of a digital revolution that is reshaping the financial services industry. And, against this backdrop, financial institutions are at vastly different levels of maturity; the world’s biggest banks are managing large-scale infrastructure migrations and making significant investments in AI while regional banks and credit unions are putting plans in place for modernization strategies, and fintechs are purpose-built and cloud native. To explore this more, I recently had the privilege of attending the annual Reuters NEXT live event in New York City. The event gathers globally recognized leaders across business, finance, technology, and government to tackle some of today’s most pressing issues. On the World Stage, I joined Del Irani, a talented anchor and broadcast journalist, to discuss the future of lending and the pivotal role of data and AI in building a more inclusive financial system. Improving financial access Our discussion highlighted the lack of access to traditional financial systems, and the impact it has on nearly 100 million people in North America alone. Globally, the problem affects over one billion people. These people, who are credit invisible, unscoreable, or have subprime credit scores, are unable to secure everyday financial products that many of us take for granted. What many don’t realize is, this is not a fringe subset of the population. Most of us, myself included, know someone who has faced the challenges of financial exclusion. Everyday Americans, including young people who are just starting out, new immigrants and people from diverse communities, often lack access to mainstream financial products. We discussed how traditional lending has a limited view of a consumer. Like looking through a keyhole, the lender’s understanding of the person in view is often incomplete and obstructed. However, with expanded data, technology, and advanced analytics, there is an opportunity to better understand the whole person, and as a result have a more inclusive financial system. At Experian, we have a unique ability to connect the power of traditional credit with alternative data, bringing a more holistic understanding of consumers and their behaviors. We are dedicated to leveraging our rich history in data and our expertise in technology to create the future of credit and ultimately bring financial power to everyone. The future of lending After spending two days with over 700 industry leaders from around the world, one thing is abundantly clear: much like the early days of the internet, today, we are at the cutting-edge of a technical revolution. Reflecting on my time at Reuters NEXT, I am particularly excited by the collective commitment to drive innovative, and smarter ways of working. We are only beginning to scratch the surface of how data and technology can transform financial services, and Experian is positioned to play a significant role. As we look to the future, I am excited about the ways we will create new opportunities for businesses and consumers alike.
The advertising ecosystem has seen significant transformation over the past few years, with increased privacy regulation, changes in available signals, and the rise of channels like connected TV and retail media. These changes are impacting the way that consumers interact with brands and how brands understand and continue to deliver relevant messages to consumers with precision. Experian has been helping marketers navigate these changes, and as a result, our marketing data and identity solutions underpin much of today’s advertising industry. We’re committed to empowering marketers and agencies to understand and reach their target audiences, across all channels. Today, we are excited to announce our acquisition of Audigent—a leading data and activation platform in the advertising industry. With Audigent’s combination of first-party publisher data, inventory and deep supply-side distribution relationships, publishers, big and small, can empower marketers to better understand their customers, expand the reach of their target audiences and activate those audiences across the most impactful inventory. I am excited to bring together Audigent’s supply-side network as a natural extension to our existing demand-side capabilities. Audigent’s ability to combine inventory with targeted audiences using first-party, third-party and contextual signals provides the best of all worlds, allowing marketers to deliver campaigns centered on consumer choices, preferences, and behaviors. The addition of Audigent further strengthens our strategy to be the premier independent provider of marketing data and identity, ultimately creating more relevant experiences for consumers. To learn more about Experian and Audigent, visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/ and https://audigent.com/.
When it comes to cybercriminals and threat vectors, we need to expect the unexpected. Experian’s 12th annual Data Breach Industry Forecast highlights several potential trends for 2025, with AI playing a central role. This year has already seen more data breaches and impacted consumers than 2023, indicating that global data breaches are not slowing down. Some things to watch out for next year includes the potential for more internal fraud. As companies train employees on AI, there is a growing risk that some will misuse their knowledge for internal theft and sourcing sensitive information. Another trend may be cyberattackers targeting large data centers, with the growth of generative AI introducing power as a new attack vector. It’s reported that a single ChatGPT query uses significantly more electricity than a standard Google search, making data centers and cloud infrastructure vulnerable, especially in countries with varying security standards. We expect AI-related attacks to dominate the headlines next year and investments in cybersecurity will increase to tackle this emerging threat, as hackers leverage AI for phishing, password cracking, malware, and deepfakes. Jim Steven, Head of Crisis and Data Response Services at Experian Global Data Breach Resolution in the UK, anticipates that global data breaches will persist at their current rate next year. He notes that ransomware attacks are likely to become even more sophisticated with the integration of AI. Additionally, Steven predicts that threat actors will escalate their tactics to achieve greater rewards, and the misuse of consumer data to damage reputations will increase in 2025. To access the complimentary report, click here.