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Honors for Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence

ISC builds confidence through security

Since its founding in 2007, International Smart Card (ISC) has helped expand access to digital banking, bringing millions of people into the financial mainstream. Today, it supports more than 17 million users. With Mastercard Threat Intelligence, ISC is taking the next step in that mission — strengthening fraud defenses with a more proactive, intelligence-led approach that helps deter cyber threats before they reach customers.

Safeguarding

the payments ecosystem for merchants, partners and cardholders

Identifying

genuine risks while minimizing impact on legitimate transactions

Shifting

from reactive response to confirmed fraud cases to proactive prevention

Man on phone in front of HP laptop

Challenge

As digital banking adoption grew, ISC faced rising pressure from payment attacks, including high volumes of card-testing activity. These attacks can signal larger fraud schemes, as criminals use small transactions to validate stolen or generated card numbers, creating abnormal declines, fees and operational strain. 

 

Beyond fraud losses, card testing also put customer trust at risk through unnecessary card blocks, declined legitimate transactions and friction. To protect the payment experience as its card base expanded, ISC needed to shift from largely reactive manual reviews to earlier, intelligence-led prevention. 

Solution

ISC made intelligence central to its fraud operations by embedding Mastercard Threat Intelligence signals directly into its existing fraud rule management systems. That helped the team flag high-risk PANs linked to card-testing activity in real time and act within familiar monitoring workflows, without adding complexity. 

 

With fraud and risk teams moving from reactive reviews to a more proactive, intelligence-led model, ISC could identify threats earlier in the fraud lifecycle and make faster, more confident decisions. 

 

Mastercard Connect supported adoption by placing Threat Intelligence alongside Fraud Center and other applications in one centralized platform, giving ISC teams easy access, visibility and day-to-day actionability. 

Woman on HP laptop at a coffee shop

Impact

By identifying card-testing activity earlier, ISC helped reduce the risk that suspicious activity could progress into broader fraud exposure. Mastercard Threat Intelligence gave ISC greater confidence to act on high-risk signals while helping legitimate transactions continue with less disruption — strengthening protection without adding unnecessary customer friction.

3,246

card-testing transactions flagged within six months

1,377

fraudulent primary account numbers (PANs) identified

0

false positives across the trial period

Mastercard Threat Intelligence has helped us strengthen our fraud prevention approach, moving from manual detection toward timelier, intelligence-led action. The Card Testing capability provides highly relevant signals that help us identify potential threats with greater precision, supporting faster decisions while reducing unnecessary disruption to legitimate activity.

Mohammed Zohdi Asaflie Group CISO International Smart Card

ISC’s cybersecurity and fraud teams have continued to evolve their approach as payment threats become more sophisticated. By adding a more proactive detection model, the team is strengthening its ability to identify potential risks earlier, help protect customers and support a more secure card network.

What's next

With proactive fraud detection now part of its day-to-day operations, ISC is continuing to strengthen its resilience and help build trust across the broader payments’ ecosystem. 

Mastercard Threat Intelligence is helping ISC identify high-risk activity with greater precision, giving teams more confidence to act on relevant signals while reducing unnecessary disruption to genuine transactions. 

As ISC expands its card base and services, Mastercard’s protection and analytics capabilities can continue to support a strong partnership focused on more secure and more trusted digital payments.

Meet the ISC team 

Mohammed Zohdi Asaflie

CISO & Manager of IDM (Identity Management)

Mohammed Al-Attar

CISO Deputy

Haider Emad

IDM Deputy

Hussein Adnan

Head of VAPT & TI

Mahdi Salah

Head of DevSec Ops

Barakat Sabeh

Head of OFDP (Operational Fraud Detection & Prevention)

Ali Faiq

Head of Cloud Hosting & Security

Khalid Samir

Head of IT Sec and SOC

Sharo Karwan

Head of GRC

Mustafa Ihsan

Head of Digital ID

Ali Adil

IT Infra Head of System Admin

Anas Mohammed Ridha

Fraud & Dispute Supervisor 

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