2020 has certainly been a year no one expected. While we couldn’t have anticipated the many twists and turns in the wider world, at Identiq we’re very grateful for the many highlights and successes the year brought alongside its undoubted challenges. 

Soaring Enthusiasm 

Most especially, we hadn’t predicted the enthusiasm we’ve seen for our new approach to fraud prevention, and to privacy. A year ago, we were focused on the practical benefits of our solution; it makes catching fraud easier, and improves customer experience immeasurably.

What we hadn’t realized is that fraud prevention leaders are just as excited about the more intangible elements as well:

• the ability to collaborate directly with fraud teams at different companies; 
• the new standard being set for user privacy, once no personal data needs to be shared; 
• and most importantly being able to trust good users and remove friction from their online journey.

During the roundtable discussions we hosted for fraud fighters from across diverse industries during the year, and in the 1-1 meetings we’ve had throughout the year with them, we’ve been struck by the passion in this industry for increasing trust, to create an ecosystem where companies can easily trust the right users, and the users can trust the companies. 

Identiq, which both identifies trustworthy users and helps to protect their personal data, is a natural part of the evolution towards the more trustful environment that fraud leaders desire.

It is both humbling and inspiring to see the reactions of fraud leaders to Identiq’s network, and the concept behind it - something that was particularly in evidence at the Identiq Member Summits in March and October. 

We’re delighted to have received so much recognition from external sources as well. It wouldn’t be possible to list all of the instances from this year without making this far longer than would be reasonable - so we’ve picked out the highlights.

Gartner: Cool Vendor and 2021 Top Strategic Trends

We were (and are!) thrilled to have been named in the Gartner Cool Vendors in Privacy, 2020 report. As Gartner puts it, Cool Vendors are “considered innovative or transformative for products, services or initiatives.”

It was also very meaningful for us to be named in the Privacy category specifically - a recognition that Identiq is bringing a new era of user privacy into the fraud prevention and identity validation space. 

Even five years ago, making these data-centric and data-intensive industries privacy-first would have sounded impossible. It’s only an option now because of technological advances which have enabled us to bring decades-old cryptographic techniques to be applied in the real world.

It’s called Privacy Enhancing Computation - and Gartner has chosen it for its Top Strategic Trends for 2021. 

As Gartner puts it, this trend allows organizations “to collaborate on research securely across regions and with competitors without sacrificing confidentiality. This approach is designed specifically for the increasing need to share data while maintaining privacy or security.”

That’s us!

Best Fraud Detection Startup

We’re honored to announce that Identiq was chosen as one of Welp Magazine’s Best Fraud Detection Startups Based Out of Israel. Welp made its decisions based on an evaluation of innovation, growth, management and societal impact, and we’re very happy to have been chosen!

We were also the only Featured Vendor chosen in the Data Provider category of the Merchant Fraud Journal’s 2020 Vendor Guide. We very much enjoyed the irony of the category, which nicely highlighted our innovative approach: replacing data providers with a providerless solution. 

It has been wonderful this year to see how deeply industry leaders and experts relate to the idea of going providerless, and collaborating directly with other companies, in place of the traditional third party provider model.

Sharing Expertise

We’re also happy to look back on the year knowing that we used some of the time to share our expertise and advice with the wider community. There have been too many articles, interviews and reports to list each one here, but we’ll just pick out some of the most memorable. 

First up has to be the contributors to our Fighting Fraud on the Front Lines series - interviews and guest posts which gave some of the experienced fraud and payments professionals we’ve been privileged to work with this year a platform to share their tips and learnings. Check out what Louise Garratt from Easyjet, Elena Michaeli from Shutterstock, Vlad Branin from Gett and more have to say, on our blog. 

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• CEO Itay Levy has been contributing to Forbes, explaining about providerless technology and also commenting on the unique dangers of the 2020 holiday season. Itay also sat down with Authority Magazine to share the story of how he once got the entire country of Israel blocked by Google, and what this and the other experiences of his professional life have taught him - and how it all led to co-founding Identiq. More seriously, he also explained in Toolbox how privacy regulations, far from killing innovation, can result in true improvement across industries. 
• Co-founder and VP Product Uri Arad was approached by so many past colleagues from the industry asking for advice, as the impact of the pandemic began to hit, that he ended up putting his thoughts into concrete form over a number of articles for different publications. You can find the top 7 articles here. He also warned in Total Retail of the ticking time bomb that user accounts represent for companies who don’t manage the risk effectively now that the initial crisis has passed. 
• Our CMO, Shmuli Goldberg, shared his thoughts on why collaboration could be the silver bullet for fighting fraud in the online gaming industry - from the perspective of a dedicated gamer. It’s a great article, and also gave Shmuli the chance to fulfil a lifelong dream of bringing his passion for gaming into his professional life. 

We’re also proud to have been profiled by TechRepublic, Gestalt IT, Payments Source, Practical Ecommerce, 451 Research, and more, giving us the opportunity to share the idea of Privacy Enhancing Computation and what it can do for identity validation with an even wider audience. 

Collaboration is the Heart of What We Do

It’s been a year none of us could have predicted. We’d like to thank all of the amazing industry excerpts and fraud fighting leaders, from so many incredible companies in diverse industries, who inspired us with their enthusiasm for our vision. We’re especially grateful to those who have joined us on the path towards true collaboration in fraud prevention. 

As we look towards the new year, we’re honoured to move forward with your support and encouragement. Together, we’ll change how things are done.