Why Digital Risk Matters in the Fight Against Freight Fraud

You’re fighting freight fraud and you have your process in place.

• Safety
• Authority
• Operating Status
• COI

Sounds like you’ve got the basics down. But are you moving as fast as the fraudsters?

Whether you’re a shipper or a broker, you understand the importance of thoroughly vetting carriers before trusting them with a load. It requires identifying critical data points, weighing their impact, and strategically making informed and confident decisions that align with your hiring practices.

Today’s risks have evolved into three key areas: asset risk, contact risk, and digital risk. If you’re not proactively assessing these with every carrier you hire, you may find yourself vulnerable to fraud.

We’ll take a closer look at each type of risk and its potential consequences if overlooked.

Detecting and assessing risky carriers through data

Asset risk

Asset risk relates to information associated with tangible aspects of a government-registered carrier authority, such as the physical address on record. Truckstop monitors certain asset risk data points and surfaces context that may indicate potential risk, as indicated by the pattern of changes and data itself.

Asset risk also extends to company authority itself and the company’s physical assets. Changes in asset data, in particular authority status or vehicle identification number (VIN) conflicts, can signal potential fraud, and you may choose to complete additional diligence.

Truckstop has identified an increasing trend of unauthorized DOT and MC number sales. Fraudsters use these acquired authorities to impersonate legitimate carriers and gain unauthorized access to company systems, inboxes, and contacts.

By impersonating a carrier that is no longer operational, scammers can avoid detection more effectively compared to compromising the information of an active carrier. With fraudsters getting smarter, in addition to asset risk detection, brokers and shippers need more advanced tools to identify potential fraud and aid in combating emerging threats.

Contact risk

Contact risks are changes observed through FMCSA and RMIS data that could indicate potential fraudulent activity. Truckstop tracks these changes over time and uses the monitored data to help detect suspicious email addresses and non-fixed VoIP (voice-over-IP) phone lines, which are commonly used by bad actors to hide their identities.

Use of VoIP can signal potential carrier fraud when combined with other data points commonly associated with suspicious activity. The presence of VoIP combined with other factors can elevate a given carrier’s potential risk level. However, VoIP can be used by legitimate businesses and should not be used as the sole indicator of fraud.

Email address and address changes are also typical in normal operational activities of legitimate businesses, especially in an industry of high employee turnover and rising rent costs. But since even one lost load can have a meaningful negative impact on a brokerage, effective risk assessment of these changes or updates should consider more than just contact changes alone. You should always conduct additional vetting in line with your carrier selection policies before hiring a carrier.

Digital risk

Traditional asset and contact risk indicators, like FMCSA inspections and contact changes, often lag actual events. This can lead to outdated and potentially misleading information. In contrast, digital risk provides a near real-time view of a carrier’s online behavior.

By monitoring digital behavior, such as user location and login attempts, you can make more informed decisions about potential carriers. This intelligence can help you identify potential red flags early on and could be the difference between hiring a legitimate carrier or a risky one.

The Risk Factors digital risk advantage

Truckstop’s Risk Factors carrier vetting product helps address the issues of asset risk, contact risk, and most importantly, digital risk. Risk Factors stands out in its ability to continuously evaluate new data against historical, proprietary sources of information accumulated over nearly thirty years of doing business to detect data patterns consistent with suspicious activity and assess risk.

Truckstop’s Risk Factors leverages our vast ecosystem of data to identify potential fraud based on a carrier’s history and current activity. Deviations from the user’s established patterns of behavior (e.g., IP location, typical load searches, login devices) can signal significant changes.

Our team of experienced security analysts and data scientists, with a combined 214+ years of anti-fraud expertise, continuously identify new fraud tactics employed by bad actors. While traditional vectors for fraud will continue to persist, digital risk will continue to evolve, and so will the detection methods and context that Truckstop makes available.

Transparency and protection for the freight industry

Cyberattacks don’t always make the news and any freight entity (both carriers and brokers) could be unaware that their operations have even been compromised. As an objective and trusted third party, Risk Factors analyzes and summarizes digital behavior to help bring transparency to the industry. Risk Factors gives our customers valuable proprietary Truckstop data that cannot be accessed anywhere else.

Our proprietary data, compiled from usage patterns across our portfolio of applications, provides valuable insights into digital risk within the freight industry. We offer this data as a service to promote a fair and balanced neutral freight marketplace. While it’s challenging to keep pace with the ever-evolving activities of bad actors, our digital signals and fraud mitigation tools empower you with more information to help you make informed decisions, every time.

Truckstop’s fraud mitigation and risk assessment tools help carriers and brokers stay ahead of cyber threats in the freight industry. Our data and adaptive digital signals provide insights needed to help make informed decisions and mitigate fraud risks, giving you tools to make informed decisions to protect your business.