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AIOps and ITPA: 7 Steps for Using Automation to Prevent Credit Card Fraud

Written By Roisin Ward
Jun 22, 2023

Incident response is one of the most prevalent, time-consuming, and challenging processes in an already  complex IT environment. At the height of digital transformation and organizational strategy, businesses are craving success and growth during a time when next to nothing seems certain.  

Organizations are shifting infrastructure to multi-cloud environments and getting a good mix of emerging technologies, like edge computing and internet of things (IoT), and as that happens, the complexity of IT stands in the way of success. As reported by Harvard Business Review, a whopping 82 percent of large enterprises surveyed agree.  

Businesses can, however, find that success when they use the right strategy – and technology mix. 

BLOG: From Alert Madness to Incident Response Nirvana: An AIOps and ITPA Strategy 

The Main Jobs of AIOps and ITPA 

Take Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) and IT process automation (ITPA) for example. They’re a go-to combo for automating and streamlining incident response, reducing meant time to resolution (MTTR), and improving overall IT efficiency. Ultimately, they can help businesses overcome the most challenging times of jampacked complexity and find peace of mind when uncertainty might seem unbearable. 

Known as a set of practices and tools that leverage machine learning and other AI techniques to automate and enhance IT operations, AIOps can be used to monitor and analyze data from various sources to identify and resolve issues in real time, predict and prevent problems, and optimize IT infrastructure.  

Its counterpart, ITPA, focuses on automating routine tasks and workflows in IT operations, such as provisioning new servers, applying software updates, and performing backups. ITPA works to reduce the time and effort required to complete these tasks, while also reducing errors and ensuring consistency.  

Real-world Example: AIOps and ITPA in the Financial Services Industry 

The two technologies are ideal for detecting and resolving incidents in the financial services industry, as detecting and preventing fraud are top priorities. In this case, an AIOps system is monitoring a large financial institution’s credit card transaction.  

Step 1: Detecting a fraudulent transaction 

The process starts when the AIOps system detects a fraudulent transaction – a suspicious transaction pattern that tells IT that something’s not quite right. This type of incident is difficult for a human operator to manually detect, especially in large transaction volumes. It makes for an ideal use case for AIOps, as the tool is specifically designed to analyze loads of data and identify patterns and anomalies that may indicate a problem.  

Step 2: Triggering an alert 

Once the AIOps system catches the fraudulent transaction, it triggers an alert and creates a ticket in the IT service management (ITSM) tool, which is an essential part of the incident response process because of its ability to track and manage incidents and alerts.  

Step 3: Assigning the ticket 

Next, the ITSM tool uses ITPA to automatically assign the ticket to the appropriate team, based on the type of fraud detected and the priority in which it falls. This automation ensures optimal speed and accuracy during this step of the incident response.  

Step 4: Investigating the transaction 

The ITPA system begins investigating this case’s fraudulent transaction by analyzing data from multiple sources, like transaction history, location, and user behavior. ITPA is particularly crucial in this step of the process, as the type of analysis being carried out—processing large amounts of data quickly and precisely—is beyond what a human operator can do. 

Step 5: Blocking, preventing activity  

The investigation basically indicates information needed for the ITPA system to determine that the transaction is fraudulent, and so it automatically blocks it, and also prevents further fraudulent activity. This type of automation is critical in fraud prevention because it means the response is triggered in real time, which reduces potential damage from happening from that point going forward.  

Step 6: Verifying, ensuring the incident has been resolved  

Now, the AIOps system is ready to validate that the transaction has been blocked and then confirm that no further fraudulent activity has occurred. This verification is highly important, as it ensures that the incident has been fully resolved, and only then can the financial institution and its customers affirm protection from any additional loss.  

Step 7: Updating the ticket status  

The financial institution’s IT team reaches the finish line with the ITSM tool, which uses ITPA to update the ticket status (noting that the incident has in fact been resolved), and then to close the ticket.  

READ MORE: 3 Ways Financial Institutions Can Reduce Risk With Automation 

Today’s IT environment is already complex, and the last thing we need is to make it more challenging … but incident response is notorious for doing just that, along with taking up too much time. As organizations seek efficiency, growth, and certainty during peak digital transformation times, they’re moving over to infrastructure and multi-cloud environments, and putting new blends of emerging technologies—like AIOps and ITPA—to work. See how it all works by requesting a demo.  

About the author, Roisin Ward:

About the author, Roisin Ward:

Automation Strategist

Roisin is an automation strategist at Resolve and started working for the company in August 2020.