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L.N. Revathy

Coimbatore, Dec. 11 Online booking of tickets is now quite common. While this facility is both easy and convenient, it is not without drawbacks. Cyber criminals are on the prowl, trying to intercept personal information of the user for personal gain if the system is not well protected.

While online booking by rail and road is just catching up, booking airline tickets online is common now. In 2004, the International Air Transport Association had stated that its objective was to achieve 100 per cent implementation of eTicket facility globally by March 2008. The IATA is said to have achieved 82.5 per cent.

However, the rise in online booking of tickets has also caused concern in some quarters. A report by Deloitte and the International Association of Airline Internal Auditors shows that airline frauds cost the global aviation industry over $600 million a year. The report showed that the credit card fraud loss was really huge and more than one-third of the airlines were affected by it, accounting for close to 60 per cent of all external fraud-related losses. “The credit card fraud alone is costing airlines an average of $1 million a year,” the report said.

Most of the players in the airline industry have implemented the online payment security system to safeguard themselves. SpiceJet and Jet Airways, for instance, have implemented Cybersource’s Decision Manager as the online payment security system.

Dr Akif Khan, Head (Client and Technical Services), CyberSource, told Business Line that the incidence of online fraud was on the rise, accounting for about one per cent of the business volume. According to him such frauds happen when merchants do not have the tools or processes in place to identify the genuineness of a transaction. Stating that his company’s Decision Manager tool automated the checking of orders, Dr Khan said that the tool would help look up where the credit card was issued, the customers address and where the IP address is located besides looking for changes in identity across its global database of transactions. “This automated checking streamlines the risk management process for merchants. Only the genuinely suspicious orders are flagged for review.”

“A number of travel portals and airlines are in the process of testing and integrating this solution,” Dr Khan said. On the daily business volume, he said CyberSource currently processed over four million transactions for 22,000 merchants globally.

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