Fighting Cybercrime Can Be Turned Into A Commercial Opportunity

This assertion comes in a whitepaper from Amadeus the travel technology company about safeguarding information systems against cybercrime, which can cost victim companies an average of $2.6 million.

Acting to prevent cyberattacks can allow companies to protect sensitive information to improve the customer experience, grow their reputation, reduce risk exposure and ultimately improve the balance sheet, according to the report.

The white paper’s key findings include:

• Companies can use security initiatives to improve their customers’ experience and drive greater sales on their websites.
• There are significant opportunities for airlines to unlock hidden revenues by reducing the number of valid transactions which are blocked by ineffective fraud management
• Storing sensitive data as tokens allows travel companies to eliminate sensitive data altogether from their organisations which greatly reduces the burden of meeting regulatory obligations.
• Automating fraud management controls can not only reduce the level of fraud, which a company is exposed to but also reduce the hidden cost of fraud.

Amadeus head of travel payments, Celia Pereiro, said: “The global travel industry is facing complex challenges as a result of the growing risk of account takeover or identity theft.

"Nonetheless, we believe this can also be a lever for growing top line revenues.”
A key recommendation of the paper is that companies take holistic approach to data security.
Pereiro said: “To achieve the revenue opportunity, the responsibility for safeguarding data cannot be the domain of a single department but span the whole organisation, with conversations across and beyond silos.

“We have developed this white paper with the explicit aim of driving these conversations between those responsible for assuring the safety of their companies’ data IT heads and commercial executives.”

South African OTA Travelstart, one of the paper’s key contributors, has leveraged data security technology on its mobile app to improve the payment experience.

Chief executive and founder, Stephan Ekbergh, said: “It shouldn’t take you as long to book a flight from Cape Town to J’burg as it does to fly there. “With our new Flapp app our customers have gone from over 30 clicks to just two to book and pay for this trip, saving them valuable time.”

To simplify the payment process in Flapp, Travelstart had to store their customers’ credit card details, which they convert to secure “tokens” with the help of Amadeus.

The Amadeus whitepaper is available here. http://bit.ly/1SY9S9u