IBM Attacks Fraudsters

IBM joined the threat and fraud intelligence market today with a new strategy and two software and service offerings, stemming from technology it gained from its earlier acquisitions of Entity Analytics and Language Analysis Systems (LAS).

IBM's new Threat & Fraud Intelligence strategy encompasses five main solution families: insider threat and candidate screening for government intelligence; real-time analysis for law enforcement investigation; fraud intelligence for civilian government agencies; and threat and fraud intelligence for banking as well as for insurance.

It's all about knowing for sure who you're dealing with. IBM says it will provide products that match and verify the names and identities of business partners, customers, and employees by comparing and analyzing them with factors such as nicknames, titles, format changes, and typos.

"IBM has always been in the e-business space for its corporate customers. Extending their products and services to reduce the level of fraudulent transactions, to retain transaction history for subsequent analysis, and to lower customer support costs makes perfect sense for IBM," says Eric Ogren, security analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group.

"Many businesses are looking to improve on their ability to detect fraud from online transactions," Ogren says.

IBM rolled out two new software and services bundles: Threat & Fraud Intelligence Starter Pak and Threat & Intelligence Law Enforcement Solution. IBM also upgraded the Global Name Recognition software it got from its LAS acquisition in March, as well as adding more languages to its Entity Analytics software, EAS v4.1.

"Establishing accurate identities and understanding relationships between individuals is emerging as the most critical principle in corporate and government security," said John Slitz, vice president of threat and fraud intelligence solutions for IBM, in a statement.

IBM's new Threat & Fraud Intelligence strategy is part of its Information on Demand initiative IBM announced back in February.

— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading