ThreatMetrix Shares Strategies for Businesses to Protect Privacy, Safeguard Data and Build Trust on the Internet in Alignment with Data Privacy Day
San Jose, CA (PRWEB) January 26, 2015 -- ThreatMetrix®, the fastest-growing provider of context-based security and advanced fraud prevention solutions, today announced its alignment with Data Privacy Day by outlining strategies for businesses to build trust on the Internet through better cybersecurity measures without compromising consumer privacy.
Coordinated and led by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), Data Privacy Day is held each year on January 28 to raise international awareness and empower individuals and businesses to better protect their privacy, centered on the theme of “Respecting Privacy, Safeguarding Data and Enabling Trust.” For its third consecutive year, ThreatMetrix has signed on as a Data Privacy Day Champion, supporting the ideal that individuals, organizations, business and government all share the responsibility to be aware of data privacy challenges.
During President Obama’s State of the Union address last week, it was clear that cybersecurity is an urgent and growing concern among the U.S. government and its citizens. The proposed Privacy Bill of Rights would allow consumers to decide what pieces of their personal data are collected by companies and decide how that data is used. The legislation would also enable consumers to prohibit companies that collect their data for one purpose to use it for another. These changes have the potential to significantly impact the way businesses process customer data.
“The only way we can build trust on the Internet is through better control of the consumer data processed online,” said Alisdair Faulkner, chief products officer at ThreatMetrix. “Obama’s proposed Privacy Bill of Rights will raise the bar for privacy protection, keeping all companies no matter where they reside to the same standards. It may seem backwards, but to build trust, businesses and government entities need to increase data sharing while ensuring privacy. This means implementing security solutions that share data in real time, but preserve customer privacy through encryption and tokenization.”
Many businesses lack the resources or knowledge to fulfill their responsibility of protecting customers’ privacy and data. Cybercriminals are often virtually impossible to locate due to the use of stolen identities, compromised devices, and masked IP addresses and many businesses simply don’t know how to stop those networks of fraudsters.
“All businesses, regardless of industry, need efficient, automated processes for fraud detection and customer notification,” said Faulkner. “Any company that uses some form of online user authentication is now going to be held accountable for at least a minimal level of protecting customer privacy. The proposed Privacy Bill of Rights requires customers be notified by businesses about a data breach within 30 days, but cybercriminals can take data in the blink of an eye. Thirty days gives cybercriminals an eternity to monetize that information. Ideally, businesses need to be able to measure unauthorized access in real time, address the problem and notify customers immediately.”
To help combat cybercrime while maintaining customer privacy to build trust online, ThreatMetrix has outlined several strategies for businesses to implement:
• Digital Identity Proofing –Traditional identity verification technologies such as challenge questions rely on personal information that has already been breached and is in the hands of the cybercriminals. Businesses need to take a different approach and analyze global patterns of identity usage, including locations, devices, accounts, transactions and associations over time to consider all aspects of a user’s behavior without putting artificial speed bumps in the way of the customer.
• Secure Anonymized Shared Intelligence – Businesses need a network to fight a network, but they also need “privacy by design.” Intelligence networks need to anonymize and secure data not only against outside attacks but also internal theft and social engineering attacks. Legal restrictions such as those proposed by Obama will fail to protect consumer data if not backed by advanced technology and processes.
• Endpoint Threat Intelligence – To differentiate between trusted users and cybercriminals, businesses need to consider the context of every access attempt and transaction from each user. Whether initiated by a customer or an employee, businesses need to establish the credibility of the transaction in real time based on the full context of the user’s identity, behavior over time and device threats. These threats include man-in-the-middle and man-in-the-browser attacks, account compromise, bots, proxies, and location and transaction anomaly screening to determine the level of authentication and authorization required to process the request.
The most effective way for businesses to protect against cybercrime is through information sharing, leveraging an anonymized global data repository, such as the ThreatMetrix® Global Trust Intelligence Network (The Network), which analyzes over 850 million monthly transactions and protects more than 210 million active user accounts across 3,000 customers and 15,000 websites and mobile applications.
ThreatMetrix Resources
• Share this news on Twitter: In alignment with @DataPrivacyDay, @ThreatMetrix outlined strategies for businesses to build trust online: http://goo.gl/NKt4EQ
• Guilty Until Proven Innocent: How Incorrectly Identifying Good Customers as Cybercriminals Damages Your Bottom Line
• eBook: ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Report: Q4 2014
About ThreatMetrix
ThreatMetrix builds trust on the Internet by offering market-leading advanced fraud prevention and frictionless context-based security solutions. These solutions authenticate consumer and workforce access to mission critical applications using real-time identity and access analytics that leverage the world’s largest trusted identity network.
ThreatMetrix secures enterprise applications against account takeover, payment fraud, fraudulent account registrations resulting from malware, and data breaches. Underpinning the solution is the ThreatMetrix® Global Trust Intelligence Network, which analyzes over 850 million monthly transactions and protects more than 210 million active user accounts across 3,000 customers and 15,000 websites and mobile applications.
The ThreatMetrix solution is deployed across a variety of industries, including financial services, enterprise, e-commerce, payments, social networks, government and insurance.
For more information, visit http://www.threatmetrix.com or call 1-408-200-5755.
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Beth Kempton, Walker Sands Communications, +1 (312) 241-1178, [email protected]
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