ValidSoft Products May Help Prevent Fraud, Ovum Report Advises
LONDON--(Marketwire - 03/09/11) - ValidSoft Limited (http://www.validsoft.com ), a wholly owned subsidiary of Elephant Talk Communications, Inc. (OTC.BB:ETAK - News) (www.elephanttalk.com), today announced that the company and its fraud detection technology had been featured in a new report from Ovum, a leading research and analysis firm based in London (http://about.ovum.com/app/mobile-devices-are-being-used-to-prevent-fraud/).
Ovum, part of the Datamonitor Group, independently evaluates new technologies and approaches, helping clients in the telecom and other industries identify and seize new business opportunities. In a February 2011 report, Ovum senior analyst Andy Kellett describes growing concerns over the security of networks that include mobile phones. Kellett says that "two interesting technological solutions have caught Ovum's attention during the last year and both are from ValidSoft. Ovum's opinion report confirms the value of ValidSoft's technologies and its readiness to go-to-market."
The first problem tackled by ValidSoft's products is determining whether or not credit or debit card transactions are real or fraudulent. As the Ovum report points out, fraudulent transactions outside of the UK using card numbers stolen from British citizens have jumped 77% since 2009. As a result, banks are increasingly likely to reject legitimate transactions by UK citizens travelling abroad. As many as 90% of these legitimate transactions may be flagged as fraudulent, the Ovum report says: "When banks reject a foreign transaction because there may be fraud involved, they are far too frequently declining genuine purchases and embarrassing their customers." Banks must spend hundreds of millions of dollars following up with each of these transactions to spot the truly fraudulent ones.
ValidSoft's VALid-POS™ product dramatically boosts the chances of correctly determining which transactions are real and which aren't. The company's software uses information about the location of a credit card owner's cell phone. If a credit card number is being used to buy a diamond ring in Antwerp when the card owner's cell phone is still in London, thieves are probably at work. But if the cell phone is also in Antwerp, then the card owner probably is buying a nice gift. Of course, as the Ovum report says, this approach depends upon cell phones being turned on when people are travelling. "However, given that this is one of first actions most of us undertake when we arrive at a foreign airport, there is a good chance of this happening," the report says.
The second ValidSoft product can help governments or banks deliver services, such as benefit and welfare payments, more efficiently and cheaply. Currently, citizens who get such payments must regularly travel to a benefits centre to verify that they are who they claim to be. But ValidSoft's VALid-4F™ system uses four types of authentication to verify identity using a mobile phone, saving everyone time and money.
The VALid-4F™ system first checks to make sure that the person has a registered cell phone that's been authenticated. Then, the person must have the correct password or PIN. That's fairly routine. But then the system adds two more types of authentication. As with card fraud detection, it checks the location of a cell phone to ensure that the phone isn't in a different place than its owner for compliance purposes. And finally, it uses a sophisticated biometric voice verification system capable of precisely identifying a person when they talk into the phone. "The bank or government can use the voice verification software together with the additional 'invisible' checks to ensure that it's really you," explains Pat Carroll, CEO of ValidSoft.
The Ovum report cautions that "both the financial and government sectors require strong proof that mobile validation techniques can add value to their fraud prevention and service delivery approaches." But it adds that the testing of ValidSoft's products has been "extensive" so that the proof is growing. Now, the choice of whether to use ValidSoft's technology "is reaching the critical decision-making stage," the report says.
For ValidSoft, the Ovum report brings added credibility. "We are pleased that Ovum has recognized that our anti-fraud and security products have real value to banks, governments, and other customers," says CEO Carroll, CEO of ValidSoft Limited. |
