Fair Isaac Corp. says the new version of its Falcon fraud detection software has already helped its first user, eFunds Corp., land a big customer.
David Pelling, a product development director for Fair Isaac, of Minneapolis, said the new version, Falcon Fraud Manager 5.1, lets users adapt more quickly to new scams.
Phishing and other methods of stealing information are evolving as con artists attempt to avoid detection. To fight back, banks must often update their antifraud systems by writing new instructions on what to look for in a transaction.
The earlier version of Falcon Fraud Manager could support only 80 rules at a time, Mr. Pelling said. In the new version, that rule limit has been removed, the software engine that processes the rules has been replaced, and a browser-based interface has been added.
"It is the biggest change we've made to the Falcon software ever," Mr. Pelling said. "This is a completely new architecture."
Mike Hamlin, the director of product management at eFunds, a Scottsdale, Ariz., outsourcer of credit and debit card processing and risk management for banks, said, "The rules-writing capability is much more straightforward and easier to use. We'll be able to be much more responsive in being able to implement new rules" to detect different types of fraud.
The software's flexibility and its browser-based interface have become "fundamental to some of our ongoing sales efforts," Mr. Hamlin said. For one top-tier bank that recently signed on with eFunds, improved fraud detection technology "was one of the key elements they required." He would not name the bank, but he said it is using the software to vet debit card transactions.
Mr. Pelling said the earlier version of Falcon was harder to deploy, so it was "very difficult for our customers to supply the product to a lot of their end users."
Though Fair Isaac issued a press release about the new version Wednesday, it will not be generally available until August. "Right now we're in the early release period," Mr. Pelling said.
The rules engine in the old version has been replaced by Fair Isaac's Blaze Advisor rules management software. Fair Isaac picked up the Falcon technology when it bought HNC Software Inc. in 2002.
Theodore Iacobuzio, a vice president of research at TowerGroup, the Needham, Mass., unit of MasterCard International, said that Falcon is "the most widely accepted fraud prevention program."
Blaze Advisor has also been built into Fair Isaac's Capstone Decision Accelerator, which was introduced in October and is designed to assess whether bank customers qualify for various rewards.
For example, it can determine whether a new checking account holder has satisfied the conditions for receiving an MP3 player, or whether the initial balance is only high enough to qualify for a less-expensive prize.
"Blaze Advisor is going to be the standard rules engine across all applications," Mr. Pelling said.
Sonja Schindeler, the vice president of global fraud solutions at Fair Isaac, said the new version of Falcon would help her company develop "plug-and-play" modules to detect emerging kinds of fraud. "We have already built out a suite of products to identify identity theft," and Fair Isaac plans to introduce additional antifraud tools, she said.
Falcon customers will be able use the same underlying platform to run each of those modules, she said.
Mr. Iacobuzio said Fair Isaac's module strategy is wise. "They're taking the one fraud application and trying to deepen their penetration within banks."
