Organizations may have a lot of different needs when it comes to detecting fraud and verifying identity. In a bid to help serve these diverse and growing needs, Experian on June 1 launched its CrossCore Fraud and Identity Services platform, which can integrate multiple sets of capabilities to help organizations protect themselves and their customers.
“CrossCore is an open plug and play platform for the entire landscape of fraud and identification services,” Steve Platt, executive vice president of fraud and identity at Experian, told eWEEK.
Platt explained that an organization can toggle on the services that are needed and add new capabilities as threats emerge to help improve the decision flow. The CrossCore platform’s integration is enabled by way of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) APIs that let other technologies plug in.
Experian is at its core an information services company that provides its global customers with information that is used for identification and fraud services. So, for example, when individuals fill out an application form for a service, Experian’s data can help verify that they are who they say they are. Platt noted that Experian has multiple products and services today to help identify individuals and limit the risks of fraud. Many of those products now can directly integrate with CrossCore.
Among the existing Experian products that can integrate with CrossCore are FraudNet for account opening; Hunter for application fraud detection; Prove-ID for international identity verification; and Precise ID for U.S. identity verification.
“At the end of the day, we’re here to help our clients put up appropriate barriers for the bad guys and not let those protections get in the way of the experience that customers expect from their banks, retails and governments,” Platt said.
The CrossCore platform is deployed in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that is delivered from Experian’s data centers in the U.S. and the UK. The Experian data centers are in effect providing a private cloud infrastructure that helps keep data secure, according to Platt.
“The API we use is flexible and extensible, so it allows us to put in only the information we need in order to make the right decision, as opposed to needing to send lots of information over the wire,” he said. “The SaaS architecture is a truly multitenant, fault-tolerant architecture that allows us to have elastic capacity for the system.”
The market for fraud detection technologies is a competitive one that includes startup Simility, led by former Google fraud experts, whose fraud detection technology became generally available last week. It’s not just startups taking aim at fraud, but also established vendors, including Equifax, which launched its new FraudIQ suite in February.
Experian’s CrossCore differentiates itself in the market by being designed for the entire landscape of fraud and identity services challenges, according to Platt.
“We know that our clients need a service that can combine multiple services to provide holistic protection,” he said. “That holistic approach together with our global scale and our connection into existing systems will be hard for our competitors to match.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.