Prevention and Detection Help Protect Against Financial Losses
Scam prevention and detection are critical in today’s increasingly digital world, where criminals continue to exploit technology to manipulate and deceive individuals, businesses and organizations alike. Proactive detection and prevention of scams using people, processes and technology can help protect against financial losses. Each stakeholder has an important role to identify scams, prevent scam payments and thwart misuse of sensitive information.
For more information on scam prevention and detection steps, watch this video below.
Prevention and Detection Steps
For Individuals:
- Be aware of scams and their red flags
- Follow proven security practices to prevent scams
For Organizations:
- Provide employee training to increase scam awareness and understanding of the process controls to help prevent them
- Establish policies and process controls to secure networks, devices and information
- Leverage technology to prevent and detect scam messages, invoices and payments
For Financial Institutions:
- Provide customer education to help spot scams
- Identify and delay suspected scam-related transactions
- Work with customers to discern scam indicators
- Consider using preventive technology solutions, such as behavioral biometrics and active caller detection, for additional scam signals
- Protect your brand and customers from impersonation of websites, mobile applications and phone calls/messages by criminals
- Identify and close money mule accounts
- Use information sharing for scam intelligence and data to help improve scam payments detection
Downloadable Resources
Explore these resources for additional information on scam prevention and detection.
| Document Title | Format | Reading Time |
|---|---|---|
| Be Aware, Verify and Protect: A Guide to Scam Prevention Basics (PDF) | Document | 7 minutes |
| Steps Organizations Can Take to Prevent Scams and Protect Themselves (PDF) | Document | 5 minutes |
| The Last Line of Defense Against Scams (PDF) | Document | 5 minutes |
| Infographic: Scam Detection and Mitigation for Financial Institutions (PDF) | Document | 3 minutes |
| Considerations for Financial Institutions to Detect Scams (PDF) | Document | 5 minutes |
| Infographic: Scam Detection for Individuals (PDF) | Document | 2 minutes |
| Infographic : Scam Detection for Organizations (PDF) | Document | 2 minutes |
| What To Do If You Believe You Were Scammed (PDF) | Document | 3 Minutes |
Explore the toolkit modules below for resources to help prevent and detect scams.
The scams mitigation toolkit was developed by the Federal Reserve to help educate the industry about scams and outline potential ways to help detect and mitigate this fraud type. Insights for this toolkit were provided through interviews with industry experts, publicly available research, and team member expertise. This toolkit is not intended to result in any regulatory or reporting requirements, imply any liabilities for fraud loss, or confer any legal status, legal definitions, or legal rights or responsibilities. While use of this toolkit throughout the industry is encouraged, utilization of the toolkit is voluntary at the discretion of each individual entity. Absent written consent, this toolkit may not be used in a manner that suggests the Federal Reserve endorses a third-party product or service.