NEW YORK - A Forrester analyst at Forrester?s CXNYC 2016 explained that mobile is a prime platform for hackers to commit fraud against marketers' customers, especially for retailers that have rushed applications to market. 

The rise of mobile has caused a rise in fraud attacks against customers and retailers alike, as the untethered devices offer a wider range of options for hackers to retrieve sensitive information. Mobile fraud takes a completely different mindset to circumvent, as the technology means users are constantly changing IP addresses, mobile browsers cannot handle capability for extensive plugins and the constantly changing technology makes it difficult to keep up. 

Mobile brands can start combating fraud by monitoring individual and demographic behavior on their sites and apps. For instance, if large purchases seem unusual for a particular user, it is important to set a spending cap such as $500 and if an account goes over that, notify the customer of potentially fraudulent activity. 

For instance, a hacker can quickly catch on to the $500 spending cap and then next time purchase $499, so as to not set off the fraud algorithm. 

Fraud monitors can also pay attention to battery life, as many hackers will leverage desktop to hack mobile platforms, which mimics a mobile device. Retailers can take a look at users? battery life to determine whether or not the user is actually on a mobile device, as the battery life on mobile drains much faster.

Retailers should also be introducing biometrics into their apps such as Touch ID, as an added measure of security. However, it is essential to be wary of jail-broken device as they can often circumvent these biometric steps. 

"This is really a hard thing and a hard problem to solve," Mr. Cser said. "It requires different thinking in terms of how to solve the problem."