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eWEEK is building a new IT products and services section that encompasses most of the categories that we cover on our site. In it, we will spotlight the leaders in each sector, which include enterprise software, hardware, security, on-premises-based systems and cloud services. We also will add promising new companies as they come into the market.
Company: iovation, a TransUnion Company (provider of device reputation and behavioral insights for fraud detection and consumer authentication)
Company description: iovation was founded in 2004 with a simple guiding mission: to make the internet a safer place for people to conduct business. iovation’s fraud and authentication services help more than 30,000 brands protect and engage their customers and keep them secure in the complex digital world. Armed with the world’s largest and most precise database of reputation insights and cryptographically secure multi-factor authentication methods, iovation safeguards tens of millions of digital transactions each day.
Five billion devices have been seen by iovation’s network, 35 billion transactions protected (23 million per day) and 49 million fraud reports have been placed by the company’s cybercrime network of 4,000+ individuals. The company was founded by Molly O’Hearn, Jon Karl and Greg Pierson, who serves as CEO. It is headquartered in Portland, Ore. and operates an office in London.
Markets: iovation serves more than 30,000 customers across the globe in a wide range of industries, including retail/e-commerce, financial services, online gambling/gaming and insurance.
International Operations: London, England
Product and Services
iovation offers a suite of authentication and fraud detection solutions that help businesses secure their networks with advanced authentication and fraud prevention services. These include two fraud prevention solutions (Fraud Force, SureScore) and two authentication solutions (ClearKey, LaunchKey).
Authentication
- ClearKey: A secure, frictionless user two-factor (2FA) authentication solution for risk-based consumer authentication. ClearKey can be easily added to businesses’ existing process without adding customer friction. It provides customers with an invisible, hassle-free web experience by recognizing and using their device as a second factor of authentication.
- LaunchKey: Consumer-friendly, mobile multifactor solution for contextual, omni-channel authentication. LaunchKey is a comprehensive solution that includes an intuitive mobile application and a number of built-in authentication factors that can be easily configured through the central server’s dashboard. Administrators of LaunchKey can determine which authentication factors to use for any access or authorization request within a site or application. For higher-risk activities, like fund transfers or adding new users to an account, they can even require two or three factors to be used in combination.
Fraud Prevention
- FraudForce: A rules-based platform that leverages global device-based insight to stop fraud and abuse. FraudForce stops online and mobile fraud in real time. It uses powerful device recognition technology and a unique approach to device intelligence that leverages device-to-device and device-to-account associations, device history, and 35M detailed reports of confirmed fraud from a global network of fraud and security analysts. FraudForce can be easily integrated into any native app (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS) or web application, and at any customer touch point where fraud risk is a concern, such as account creation or modification, purchase or transfer.
- SureScore: A machine learning solution that uses global device-based insight to predict transactional risk. SureScore uses advanced machine learning algorithms to predict the outcome of any online transaction, even if you have never seen the customer or device before. SureScore is computed by analyzing millions of device and transaction attribute patterns from billions of online transactions. Unlike other online fraud detection offerings, SureScore is automatically “trained” by having access to more than 35 million detailed fraud and abuse reports that have been contributed by iovation’s extensive network of more than 3,500 fraud analysts.
Insight and Analysis
G2 Crowd has 54 reviews of iovation products as of Dec. 17. Thirty-eight of the 54 were five-star reviews.
Sample comments:
What do you like best? “The way in which iovation detects and alerts you to potentially fraudulent activity is unlike any program I have seen before. iovation has so many different tools and ways to detect this that when it pools all these resources together it can detect fraudulent activity so much quicker than other programs. The device recognition and assessment tools are great because this can provide you with a risk factor without even gathering any personal information or information that other methods may require. This allows us to make a decision on a transaction very quickly and in many cases if we would have waited for other detectors it would of been too late.
“iovation’s ability to work in real time has really helped us where it may have otherwise slipped through the net, we can now move forward as a buissness and grow as we need to with confidence.”
What do you dislike? “iovation does take quite a large load on your servers, and if you only have a very small network then it can slow this down. It is a problem easily solved and you can tweak iovation to your demands and lighten the amount of CPU it uses. We have not found this a long-term problem and we were easily able to find the perfect middle ground.”
Gartner Peer Reviews has 13 reviews as of Dec. 17, with an average of 4.7 stars on a 5-star scale.
Sample comments:
“We have been with iovation since 2013. Prior to that, we did not use a third-party fraud prevention tool. iovation has been incredibly helpful in assessing risky traffic using device recognition among many other factors. The admin console is very easy to use. The iovation team members have been wonderful to work with as well. We have had two different client account managers, and both have been great to us. They keep in touch regularly, and reach out to us if they notice something looks awry. If we notice an issue, they are also easy to reach.”
IT Central Station has a listing here but no reviews as of Dec. 17.
Based on the research published on the peer review sites listed above, eWEEK’s composite ranking for iovation is 4.7 stars on a 5-star scale.
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Examples of current customers: eSure, The AA Insurance, UMB Bank, PlayCherry, WagerWorks, Paf
Delivery: All of iovation’s solutions are delivered in the cloud via a software-as-a-service model.
Pricing: For pricing, please visit iovation.com/contact or call +1 (503) 224-6010
Other key players in this market:
ThreatMetrix, Kount, Duo Security, InAuth, SiftScience
Contact information for potential customers:
[email protected]; +1 (503) 224-6010
Resources
IT Central Station
Gartner Peer Reviews
G2 Crowd