When talking about cybersecurity, identity and authentication, the conversation often turns to “killing the password,” multi-factor authentication and mobile devices.

The next step up is adaptive authentication. These are systems that take numerous attributes – geo-location, IP address, device fingerprint and others – to and use those to validate an identity. ThreatMetrix falls into this category, helping companies recognize authorized users and stop cyber attacks, says Alisdair Faulkner, chief products officer at the company. ThreatMetrix is basically a network that can spot suspicious patterns and stops hackers from gaining unauthorized access.

ThreatMetrix works with Visa and about half of the top 50 e-commerce sites. About 40% of the company’s clients are e-commerce sites and a good portion of what they do it protecting payment systems, says Faulkner. With the preponderance of data breaches bots are using email addresses to try and breach various sites. “We probably see 500,000 individual identities being used illegitimately a day,” he adds.

The company has found a new niche working with charities, Faulkner says. Often hackers test out the validity of stolen identities charging a few dollars at a charity site before moving on to larger purchases. “We were able to identify this pattern using our network,” he says.

ThreatMetrix just released additional functionality for its core product. This latest platform update introduces new capabilities that deepen the digital authentication footprint and enable better decisions for fraud prevention, authentication and threat detection.

New authentication capabilities include expanded passive location and behavior-based analytics combined with additional step-up authentication methods to more accurately understand customer digital behaviors. In addition, ThreatMetrix unveiled the all-new Decision Management Portal, which provides forensic and visualization capabilities with improved portability across computing devices.

New digital authentication capabilities include:

• ThreatMetrix Mobile SDK 4.0, available for iOS and Android Mobile environments, leverages the latest mobile operating system fraud indicators and signals. In addition to harnessing powerful device biometrics, this update makes it easier for developers to get up and running and provides increased performance with code optimization
• A new two-way-SMS feature where users are able to reply to incoming SMS fraud alerts to verify who they are, making it effortless for consumers to play an active role in protecting their digital identity
• A new one-way voice verification that gives users the option to receive voice calls rather than an SMS text
• Location enhancements including a custom location, cell tower and Wi-Fi location evaluation pre-integrated with ThreatMetrix behavioral analytics and rules engine

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