Danger! Danger! Digital Miscreants, Malcontents and Bad Actors…Part 1

Guest post by John W. Kolker, Web Analytics Technical Consultant, Siteworx —



Are you detecting "bad actors" in real-time in your digital domain? Are you protecting the privacy of your customers, your inventory, and your transactional system from harmful and bad intentioned visitors, whether they are human or systemic?

---

Just like in the "real" non-digital world, where every system, process and transaction is subject to the cheat, the dishonest and the scoundrel, so too is the "virtual" digital world subject to the same dangers. The digital world has quickly become a reflective microcosm of the real world, where your business can, may and will fall prey to this uniquely 21st century form of chicanery.

Tealeaf and the Flip Side of Customer Experience

The flip side of customer experience is customer behavior. The dual benefit of being able to analyze customer experience is the ability to observe, track and event off of customer behavior as they are having that experience.

Although Tealeaf is a Customer Experience Management (CEM) tool, and not a "Fraud Detection Tool" per se, it is very efficient at forensically tracking all aspects of customer behavior, legitimate and otherwise, nearly instantly via active web sessions and in the near real-time via sessions as they are completed and ported to long term canister for storage.

Most other tools for web analysis aggregate and track web data after the fact and well after the visitor is gone. Sometimes the data is as stale as "from yesterday." In the case of wanting to track illegitimate or questionable visitor behavior, many times yesterday’s data is too late.

Step One: Tealeaf and Status Quo Digital Profiling

In order to understand deviant customer behavior, you must first establish "typical" customer behavior and the status quo for various parts of your digital space. Through a process called "eventing," you can analyze and establish various visitor profiles as to what is the norm. Here are examples of measures that can be tracked to understand the typical customer behavior.

General

• Average login attempts per visit
• Average credential changes i.e. password change request, pin change request etc. per period of interest
• Total visits by hour

E-Commerce

• Average order amount per session
• Average product count per session
• Average order count per session
• Average maximum order amount (for known legitimate orders)
• Average maximum product count per order (for known legitimate orders)

Financial Services Industry

• Average number of transactions per session
• Average transfer of funds amount per period per session
• Average maximum transfer amount (for known legitimate transfers)
• Average maximum transactions per session (for known legitimate transfers)

In the next post, I will discuss the last two steps to take in the process to understand and forensically track all aspects of customer behavior, legitimate and otherwise.

Siteworx Inc., a leading interactive agency and Web content management (WCM) consultancy, helps interactive marketers, Web strategists and technology leaders achieve measurable business results.