Analytics , Fraud Management & Cybercrime
Data Analytics: How to Move Toward Greater Innovation
Alvarez and Marsal's Vincent Walden on the Latest ACFE Fraud Benchmarking ReportContrary to popular perception, the pandemic did not cause many enterprises to innovate with data analytics, although overall use of data analytics did rise, says Vincent Walden, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal, citing the latest report by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners titled '2022 Anti-Fraud . (See: Leveraging Analytics for Fraud Audits)
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"The fraud and risk landscape has indeed changed in the past two years," Walden says, but "building a robust anti-fraud and monitoring program" was not at the top of companies' priority lists, and that's why "we have not seen a huge adoption of newer analytics techniques in the past two years."
But he says he is optimistic and wants enterprises to explore artificial intelligence and machine learning in the right manner. "AI means nothing if you can't solve the business problem. All companies should be doing fraud risk assessment and then map analytics and AI accordingly," he says.
In a video interview with Information Security Media Group, Walden also discusses:
- The future of data analytics in anti-fraud practice;
- Why artificial intelligence and machine learning alone provide little help;
- How data analytics can be applied to unstructured data.
As the managing director of the disputes and investigations unit at the New York-based consultancy Alvarez & Marsal, Walden specializes in forensic data analytics, continuous controls monitoring, information governance and legal discovery services.