ThreatMark CEO sees behavioral biometrics moving beyond banking

Behavior profiling and behavioral biometrics are well-positioned to move beyond the banking industry, a ThreatMark co-founder said on the Banking Information Security podcast just as one analyst forecasts the market for behavioral biometrics will reach $3.4 billion by 2026.

ThreatMark CEO and Co-founder Michal Tresner joined Todd Field of the Information Security Media Group on the podcast to talk about behavioral biometrics, behavior profiling and fraud.

The company started off in online threat-detection, but found the “cat-and-mouse game” depended on predicting future attacks from previous fraud, which “simply does not work, and moreover it brings a lot of false positives.”

From there, ThreatMark had the idea to map out legitimate users’ behavior to identify anomalies. This approach delivers results which are stable over time, and therefore enable ThreatMark to identify future fraud types, while retaining the best possible user experience for legitimate users by increasing security only as a step-up process when anomalies are detected.

The acceleration of fraud trends by the pandemic was also discussed, and Tresner says ThreatMark’s Security Operations Center has identified and mitigated 400 percent more phishing attacks during 2020 than in the previous year. Social engineering attacks have also increased, but can be reduced with the implementation of multi-layer protection with early warnings, account takeover prevention, and transaction risk analysis in one.

“Behavior profiling, specifically behavior profiling that includes or is supported by behavioral biometrics, is one of the crucial technologies for the fraud detection space these days, and it will be very significant in the future,” Tresner says, due to its combination of robust detection capabilities and support for seamless user experiences.

Global market for behavioral biometrics will hit $3.4 billion by 2026

That assessment accords with KBV Research, which forecasts the global market for behavioral biometrics will hit $3.4 billion by 2026, driven by online transaction growth and the need for enhanced security, along with IoT implementations.

The forecast in the 326-page ‘Global Behavioral Biometrics Market . . . Analysis and Forecast, 2020-2026’ represents a 23.4 percent compound annual growth rate.

The Czech Republic-based ThreatMark’s technology ingests thousands of data points, including typing biometrics and other behavioral biometric data, continuously throughout the customer journey.

Social engineering attacks have grown in sophistication over the past year, according to Tresner, prompting ThreatMark to develop a tool for recognizing when a device is being remotely operated.

Field and Tresner also discussed how ThreatMark addresses security throughout the customer journey, and the potential for behavior profiling and behavioral biometrics in other verticals than banking.

Article Topics

behavioral biometrics  |  biometrics  |  continuous authentication  |  fraud prevention  |  market report  |  secure transactions  |  ThreatMark