Our mission is to ensure every customer can transact online with complete trust: Ranjan Reddy, Founder & CEO, Bureau
By Aaratrika Talukdar, Senior Correspondent, Express Computer
With the rising identity frauds and catfishing on matrimonial websites, prevention of cyber frauds and identity risks with AI solutions has been critical. In an exclusive interaction with Express Computer, Ranjan Reddy, Founder & CEO, Bureau shares how with the help of behavioural biometrics and persona-based device intelligence, Bureau has been offering comprehensive insights into Bharat Matrimony and other matrimonial sites to identify fraud using AI
Please share a brief background of Bureau and its offerings:
Bureau was founded to provide businesses with a single source of digital trust that offers comprehensive solutions for identity verification, fraud prevention, and risk and compliance. Our mission is to ensure every customer can transact online with complete trust while delivering a seamless experience for trustworthy identities. Currently, nearly 100 fintech, regulated financial institutions, and cutting-edge technology companies rely on Bureau to ensure their customer interactions are free from friction and fraud.
In this process, we have protected over US$ 300 million of commerce from a wide range of fraud, including mule accounts, synthetic ID fraud, phishing, KYC fraud, fraud rings, UPI fraud, money laundering, and OTP theft, among others. Our customers rely on real-time decisions and monitoring from Bureau to tailor their digital user experiences. With our proprietary trust network of over 50 million verified identities, we function like a credit bureau but for identity and fraud risk.
How have you helped Bharat Matrimony and other matrimonial sites to identify fraud using AI?
Matrimonial platforms require a dependable and secure environment that fosters a tight-knit community of verified prospects. With the increasing prevalence of online fraud, ensuring secure user journeys is imperative. This is where Bureau comes in as a safety net for companies, mitigating the risks of identity fraud and facilitating the onboarding of verified and trustworthy users. Our AI and machine learning models are adept at identifying anomalies and potential fraud types that might be difficult to detect otherwise, such as identity theft, synthetic identities or fake profiles.
Our models have been trained on vast data sets, providing us with an additional advantage over others. Bharat Matrimony, for instance, utilises Bureau’s Liveness Check feature to authenticate users’ selfies, which are then matched with their ID documents. We establish a face-match score to provide them with the assurance that the ID document belongs to the user. Our ongoing efforts focus on creating a secure and user-friendly experience for matchmaking platform users.
As an industry leader, what are the best practices you would recommend to businesses on improving their ROI from existing security investments?
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses must proactively invest in technology that can adapt to changing consumer trends, regulations and highly innovative and agile malicious actors who are capable of rapidly changing their attack techniques. The reactive and compliance-driven approach stakeholders take can fall short in protecting consumers from threats such as synthetic identities, account takeovers, fake accounts, and forged government documents.
To effectively combat the increasing sophistication of online attacks, businesses need real-time decisioning capabilities to detect and respond to security threats. This enables the analysis of security data in real-time, identification of potential breaches, and immediate action to prevent damage, reducing false positives, improving operational efficiency, and enhancing customer experience.
Another area would be migrating from point solutions to an integrated security platform that provides a centralised view of operations, enabling real-time decision-making and more comprehensive protection. It also reduces long-term costs by eliminating the need for multiple licenses, maintenance costs, and training for different solutions.
It is also essential for businesses to transfer security responsibilities to their internal security division to eliminate the need for constant application changes and updates. This saves time and costs while ensuring consistent and reliable application of security protocols across the organisation. By taking proactive measures, businesses can improve their ROI from existing security investments, enhance their security posture, and better protect themselves against potential cyber threats.
Top priorities and focus areas for 2023-24:
We aim to establish a trust network of 100 million verified identities, essentially creating the first identity bureau by expanding our presence in India, strengthening partnerships and continuing to innovate within our product portfolio. We are in the process of launching our capabilities in global regions where our solutions have already been positively received and are seen as effective in addressing the problem.
