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Published 08/06/2002

Chapter 1

Introduction to CyberSource Risk Manager

This chapter provides an introduction to CyberSource Risk Manager.

Overview

CyberSource Risk Manager is a powerful, flexible order decision and risk management software solution. You can use Risk Manager to create customized rules that meet the needs of your business, then route orders based on those rules. Risk Manager helps detect risky orders before they are accepted by automating the process of accepting, rejecting, or reviewing an order.

You implement your business rules with a graphical interface that can update your decision-making criteria in real time, without any need for programming.

Risk Manager supports plug-ins that allow you to request credit card authorizations or fraud screening, check orders against a hotlist, and perform other tasks. As your business evolves, you have the flexibility to expand Risk Manager's capabilities.

Risk Manager integrates with your current order management system (OMS) and other payment systems.

Key Features

Risk Manager supports all of the following features:

• Automatically accept, reject, or review transactions
• Use a Web-based interface to create and modify your business' rules, including a visual representation of how the rules fit together
• Request credit card authorizations, Advanced Fraud Screen enhanced by Visa®, Delivery Address Verification, geolocation, and other external services
• Perform local checks on order velocity
• Check a local hotlist containing information about your best customers and orders that you know are fraudulent
• Request test transactions using a Web-based interface
• Integrate with any OMS using an Extensible Markup Language (XML) interface
• Add additional data sources or custom features to the product using the Custom API

Note  Your license may not include all of these features.

How Risk Manager Works

Your business already has rules for evaluating the risk of an order. For example, you might manually review any order for a handheld computer, or you might reject any order that uses a credit card number that is known to be fraudulent. You can combine these rules into a single flowchart, or business strategy. Figure 1 shows a simple example of a business strategy.

Figure 1 Sample Business Strategy

You use Risk Manager's Administration Server to define these rules as true-false statements. For example, if an order costs more than $500, you might mark the order for review; if it does not, you might continue to evaluate the order using other rules. Once you define all of these rules, they form a single business strategy.

Components of Risk Manager

Risk Manager includes two main components:

• Administration Server: A Web-based application where you create and edit business strategies.
• Decision Server: A transaction processing system that uses your business strategies to determine whether to accept orders.

When you create a strategy, it is stored on the Administration Server. Your company's business analysts can access the Administration Server to edit the strategy.

After you finish the strategy, you can deploy it to a test Decision Server, where you make sure that the strategy works correctly. The Administration Server includes a tool that allows you to send test transactions; see Sending Test Transactions for more information about this tool. Also, you can create an automated tool to test your strategies.

Once you are sure that the strategy works correctly, you can deploy it to a production Decision Server. You can then use the strategy to process your customers' orders.

You can review and modify the strategies on the Administration Server at any time. If you need to update a strategy, you simply redeploy it to the Decision Server.