Have you received a notification from your bank or credit card company alerting you to suspicious activity on your account and requesting you confirm a purchase? You probably wondered how the bank suspected the charge wasn’t legitimate.
Credit card companies use a variety of methods to detect fraud, which is the most common type of identity theft and is on the rise, according to Experian, one of the major consumer credit information services.
Pankaj Gupta Employer Discover Financial Services in Raleigh, N.C. Title Data engineering manager Member grade Senior member Alma mater Christian College of Engineering and Technology, in Bhilai, India
To help prevent unauthorized transactions, IEEE Senior Member Pankaj Gupta is developing tools using data integration, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-time account monitoring. Gupta is a manager of data and analytics engineering for Discover Financial Services, and he works from Raleigh, N.C.
“The innovations my fraud department has developed have helped my organization respond to threats faster and adapt more easily to future needs,” he says.
This year, he received Discover’s President’s Award, the company’s highest employee recognition. It is given to those who have achieved outstanding business results while demonstrating the company’s values.
Gupta also became an invited member of the Forbes Technology Council, a community of experienced leaders across industries, selected based on their professional achievements and leadership experience.
He says he enjoys his job but says he never meant to work in financial services, a field where he has built a nearly two-decade-long career.
As a youngster, he was curious about how things worked and would take apart gadgets his father brought home.
“My father worked at BSNL, a government telecom organization, and often took me to his office,” Gupta says. “There I would watch phones in operation and telecom operators connecting trunk calls. At home, we even had a few old, nonfunctional phones lying around.”
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