While check fraud decreased from 82 percent in 2014 to 77 percent in 2015, a 2015 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey highlighted that checks are the most targeted method of fraud. While overall check usage continues to decline, the business check market remains strong. With this in mind, printers must continue searching for and implementing advanced security features to help their clients stay safe and protected. Consider these ideas in order to determine how to best secure the checks for your company’s future.
The Price is Right
“Printers and customers need to evaluate their current revenue losses related to fraud, as well as how their checks are being targeted,” said John LaBrant, Regional Sales Director for Value Document Inks at SICPA. With this information, he explained, printers and customers work together to determine what security features are most important for their document and the most cost-effective solutions to achieve them. Important questions must be considered during this time including “Who will be authenticating?”; “How many people will be authenticating?”; “In what environment will authentication take place?”; and “Are those authenticating sufficiently trained and educated?” It is only through communication between printers, customers and security suppliers that checks and other business documents that a truly secure document can be made.
Layer It On
With so many attempts to counterfeit checks, it’s necessary to add layers of defense and protection. But, in an increasingly technological world, design features, like a void pantograph, are not enough, said LaBrant. Printers and scanners are too good at bypassing them.
“A combination of overt, covert and forensic security features creates a multi-layered security system and most effectively protects against fraud,” LaBrant noted. “While counterfeiters might be able to simulate an overt feature passable to the untrained eye, multi-layered checks incorporate covert, or hidden, security features that require some type of device not commercially available to authenticate, and training on what to look for to authenticate.”
When companies use a combination of anti-tampering and anti-duplication security features alongside ink- and paper-based security, it allows printers and customers to adapt once a threat is identified, LaBrant explained. If counterfeiters get through one wall, they’re still faced with several more.
This multi-layered concept is not only important for prevention, but in the aftermath of fraud. Banks are more likely to reimburse those using good security practices.
Check In
Despite printers’ and businesses’ best efforts, counterfeiters constantly discover and use new techniques. One of the most important ways to prepare for and prevent fraud is to stay apprised of the new changes and features to the ever-expanding landscape—and make the necessary updates.
“Check printers interested in preserving and growing their business are constantly offering new ideas to their customers,” said LaBrant, listing continuous maintenance and evaluation of security features as preventative measures.