CARY, N.C., Dec. 3 – Industries and agencies struggle to combat money laundering; organized fraud rings; claims & payments fraud; and fraud and improper payments across social benefit, employment, and tax programs. To help customers win the battle, business analytics leader SAS is expanding its Security Intelligence initiative, creating a new R&D division focused on solutions and capabilities for fraud and compliance.

SAS’ leadership in anti-fraud and security software is evidenced by a variety of awards and analyst validations. In addition, 2012 brought a 22 percent growth in customers choosing SAS for anti-fraud, compliance and security efforts. Fraud, compliance and security teams grew 165 percent this year driven by the hiring of domain experts to support customer demand.

“Security and fraud risk exposure is increasing as organizations are threatened at multiple points of vulnerability,” said Avivah Litan, VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. “Companies are reevaluating how they tackle security since a fragmented approach is consistently leaving organizations at greater risk of attack. A more holistic approach to security ensures all layers of protection function together.”

SAS is increasing focus in this space and created the new SAS R&D Fraud and Compliance Solutions Division to address the need for enterprises to detect multichannel fraud and regulatory non-compliance. These shared development resources are valuable when supporting integrated components on a common technology foundation.

SAS will enhance existing products with the power and speed of SAS in-memory, streaming and distributed computing technologies and develop new industry leading solutions for fraud, compliance and security. The team also plans to expand offerings to help other industries such as utilities and telecommunications with fraud, compliance, and security challenges.

The first of those solutions, SAS High-Performance Anti-Money Laundering (available in first quarter 2013) provides super-charged scenario tuning using SAS Visual Analytics. Time frames to run what-if scenarios are dramatically reduced from hours to seconds, so investigators can more expediently identify and address the most critical risks.

In Financial Services

Chartis Research estimates IT will spend $4.3 billion in 2013 fighting financial crime. As banks and insurers turn to technology for aid, SAS has expanded its portfolio for financial services to address fraud and financial crimes. In addition to updating popular solutions such as SAS Anti-Money Laundering, SAS Enterprise Case Management and SAS Fraud Framework for Insurance this year, SAS introduced the SAS Financial Crimes Suite. The offering consolidates multiple SAS foundational technologies for detecting, preventing and managing fraud and compliance including high-performance analytics for fighting money laundering and terrorist financing.

Fraud management solution sales in banking are up 20 percent for the US, reflecting continued investment in enterprise fraud management solutions that protect banks and their customers across all transaction types and channels.

The SAS Fraud Framework for Insurance was recognized by leading insurance advisory firm Strategy Meets Action (SMA) in September with its SMA Innovation in Action award, which spotlights new technologies that help modernize, optimize and innovate insurance practices. SAS Fraud Framework for Insurance increases investigation efficiency and investigator accuracy for leading insurers such as CNA.

In Government

State and local governments recognize fraud and improper payments as key areas for increased revenues and cost avoidance. Los Angeles County uncovered more than 200 probable fraud cases and busted ongoing conspiracies to defraud the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) Child Care benefits program. LA County is expanding its fraud fighting efforts to the In-Home Supportive Services Program. SAS received a Best Fit Integrator Award from the Center for Digital Government for its work in L.A. County.

Casey Family Programs, for a project with Virginia Department of Social Services and the Office of Comprehensive Services, licensed the SAS Fraud Framework for Government, including SAS Social Network Analysis (SNA), to mitigate risk, support compliance efforts and perform outcome analysis of services provided to at-risk youth throughout the Commonwealth. Casey Family Programs is the largest U.S. operating foundation focused entirely on foster care and improving the child welfare system.

The New York City Mayor's Office of Policy and Strategic Planning licensed the SAS Fraud Framework and SAS SNA, and is using SAS to uncover illegal conversions of buildings and apartments to add more rooms, which is a safety concern. Also, SAS is combining 3-1-1 call system data with possible illegal conversion information to help the Department of Buildings prioritize inspections. Many U.S. cities use 3-1-1 systems to handle non-emergency service calls.

On the federal side, the US government licensed SAS fraud technology to detect internal threats. SAS and Capgemini are collaborating to provide revenue fraud and improper payment protection to public sector organizations in Europe, India and Asia Pacific. Together, Capgemini and SAS already provide the UK tax authority HM Revenue & Customs with strategic risk analytics to tackle fraud and manage debt. Capgemini will also implement SAS Business Intelligence and SAS Analytics for the Maharashtra Sales Tax Department (MSTD) in India.

In Health Care

Health payers lose more than $260 billion annually to fraud, waste and abuse. As criminals and crime rings become more advanced, so does the powerful analytics in SAS Fraud Framework for Health Care. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island use SAS to identify fraud and take action. Health plan customers can tailor SAS data models to connect the dots rapidly and efficiently. As in other industries, identifying fraud early is essential in the high-stakes health plan environment.

“SAS’ advanced network analysis enables us to identify crime rings in unique ways,” said Julie Malida, Principal for Health Care Fraud at SAS. “The SAS Fraud Framework for Health Care uses text analytics to bring medical records, free-form claims text, call-center logs and customer service records into the analysis. Because much valuable health care information lives in unstructured text, SAS can help plans like no other software.”

The SAS Fraud Framework for Health Care employs rules, anomaly detection models, predictive models, text mining and network analysis to quickly spot fraud schemes, dig deeper and illuminate relationships among fraudsters.

Learn how leading organizations and institutions prevent fraud in the digital age in Intelligence Quarterly's Fraud Prevention issue. (http://www.sas.com/apps/sim/redirect.jsp?detail=SIM100594_3768)

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 60,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW.

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Source: SAS