Welcome to the new cyber-focused era of identity theft where cool gadgets and internet-connected devices are the prime victims of identity theft. As one looks in the past, prior to this digital era, there was only one concern related to identity theft and that was a wallet being stolen from a packed Metro station. Today, wallet and identity are online and the connected gadgets work as their carriers. Such products have opened a gateway to numerous possibilities for hackers through which information can end up in the wrong hands. The personal identifiable information (PII) which includes bank account details, driver’s license, and other sensitive personal information can be stolen using scams like planting malicious software on a personal computer.
According to Robert Prigge, the President of Jumio Corporation, the introduction of AI and machine learning has a great impact in securing the online identities of users because these technologies learn from data fed to them and accelerate the existing process. He explains that previously, software development required programmers to manually code their programs but now a machine can be “trained” using large amounts of data and algorithms that enable it to parse data, learn from that data, and construct the essential patterns and features.
Built on the mission to make the internet a secure place, Jumio Corporation protects the online ecosystems of businesses through cutting-edge identity verification and authentication services that quickly and accurately connect a person’s online and real-world identities. The company utilizes computer vision technology, machine learning and live verification experts to verify credentials like passports and driver’s licenses, issued by over 200 countries and territories. To date, the company has verified over 170 million identities and its solutions are preferred by leading companies from growing verticals including financial services, sharing economy, digital currency, retail, travel, and online gaming.
Jumio’s end-to-end solutions fight fraud, maintain compliance and onboard good customers faster.
ID Verification: Jumio ID Verification allows businesses to establish the genuine identity of their users by verifying government-issued IDs in real time to ensure that they have not been digitally manipulated. Jumio supports more than 3,300 ID types and its ID Verification delivers the highest accuracy rates in the industry, which translates to lower operating costs and less manual review.
Document Verification: Increasingly, online businesses comply with rules designed to stop illegal activities by requiring customers to provide a set of documents to verify their identity and confirm their current residential address. With Jumio Document Verification, your customers quickly confirm their identity and current residential address by using their smartphones to scan documents such as utility bills, even if the documents are crumpled or creased.
Authentication: Biometric-based Jumio Authentication establishes the digital identities of your users through the simple act of taking a selfie. When a new online account is created, Jumio captures an image of a valid government-issued ID and a 3D face map. A high-resolution selfie is compared to the photo on the ID to reliably establish the digital identity of the new user. When future user authentication is needed, Jumio Authentication captures a fresh 3D face map and compares it to the original face map to unlock the user’s digital identity in seconds.
Screening: Jumio Screening combines KYC-compliant ID verification with automatic AML screening for new account onboarding and ongoing monitoring. Make the right AML risk decisions with comprehensive, real-time global coverage of sanctions, watchlists, PEPs, and adverse media.
Robert’s Prior Experience, Empowering the Company to Excel in the APAC Region
Robert is a seasoned strategic leader with more than 20 years of experience managing every major business function at a variety of high-growth tech companies. He has nearly 15 years of experience operating in the APAC region from Tokyo to Singapore to Hong Kong and witnessed Asia’s explosive growth first hand.
As the president at Jumio, his focus is on delivering market-leading innovation, driving revenue growth, and accelerating operating efficiencies across the organization.
While sharing the objectives for Jumio in 2019, Robert stated, “Jumio has a number of key objectives for 2019, but central to our initiatives is to help companies reliably, securely and quickly verify online customers and to protect their online ecosystems against online fraud and account takeover. Central to this mission is investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning to dramatically improve our identity verification and authentication solutions in terms of fraud detection and verification speed.”
“This year, Jumio’s AI Labs are developing deep learning models to dramatically improve identity verification accuracy and verification speed by building production models that perform three vital functions related to online identity verification — data extraction, fraud detection, and risk scoring.”
This is how the team of Jumio continues to focus on the three critical functions:
Data Extraction: Jumio’s team uses deep learning to extract key data form ID documents. The team feeds a huge amount of data to the algorithms which improve their ability to recognize specific ID documents and make sense of the extracted data.
Fraud Detection: Deep learning further helps the platform in understanding the unique fonts, pictures, and security features of a specific country-issued ID. If an ID document has been manipulated or changed and does not conform to the pattern, Jumio’s deep learning algorithms flag it for a closer review.
Risk Scoring: The use of deep learning has also greatly helped the team to identify theft patterns and the probability of frauds based on a combination of high-risk variables. These insights also enabled them to identify that 1 percent of the ID documents (with a unique risk profile) account for about 15 percent of known fraud. The company uses this scoring to alert its verification experts to pay special attention to high-risk IDs.
“The online trends are shaking up traditional industries, but…” says Robert
When asked to share his thoughts about the business transformations in the APAC region, Robert explained that digitization and increasing internet users are shaking up the traditional industries like banking and payments. He further added, “Consumers always want to do everything online. That’s why we’re witnessing APAC companies transforming themselves to remain competitive and meet the shifting expectations of digital-first consumers.” But, such transformations need fuel. Therefore, Robert expects the region to address both sides of the equation commercial innovation and a supportive investment community. These two aspects are coming together to fuel the explosive growth in the numerous startups over the past couple of years which are driven by population growth, millennial growth, the involvement of women in the workforce, and a vibrant investment community.
Finally, while sharing his valuable guidance to aspiring entrepreneurs, Robert asserts, “My guidance is pretty simple — jump into the AI waters now. The waters are warm and not too deep.” He further adds, “AI is changing the software landscape and you no longer need to be a rocket scientist to start dabbling and building expertise. Today, machine learning experts command extraordinary salaries and investors are happy to open their checkbooks when funding AI-based startups.”
