Guardian Analytics signs Pacific Continental Bank; unveils SaaS offering

Source: Guardian Analytics

Guardian Analytics, the innovator in predictive analytics-based fraud prevention software, today announced that Pacific Continental Bank has selected Guardian Analytics' FraudMap Version 4 to proactively protect its online banking channel from fraud.

The bank has selected FraudMAP for its ability to catch sophisticated fraud schemes targeted at small and medium-sized businesses that cannot be stopped with rules-based approaches or authentication. Pacific Continental Bank has deployed FraudMAP Version 4, which was announced publicly today.

Pacific Continental Bank delivers highly personalized services through fourteen banking offices in Oregon and Washington. With $1.2 billion in assets, the community bank targets the needs of community-based businesses, healthcare professionals, professional service providers and nonprofit organizations.

"Fraud attacks targeted at small and medium-sized businesses have become even more prevalent over the past year, so we made the strategic decision to take additional precautions to ensure that our customers are protected," said Mellani Ocampo, eCommerce Manager, Pacific Continental Bank. "Fraudsters are incredibly unpredictable, and Guardian Analytics' advanced behavioral modeling was exactly what we were looking for to handle the unexpected nature of attacks like Man-in-the-Browser and money mule schemes. We were also impressed with Guardian's new SaaS delivery model which makes the solution quick and easy to deploy so we can begin taking advantage of it nearly immediately."

FraudMAP Version 4 enables financial institutions of all sizes to benefit from sophisticated online fraud protection historically only available to institutions with more resources and staff. The behavioral analytics anti-fraud solution delivers proactive fraud prevention through accurate detection, actionable analysis and visibility into suspicious online activity. Guardian Analytics' proprietary Dynamic Account ModelingTM technology models all individual online account holder activity session by session to detect suspicious actions and flag behaviors inconsistent with predicted account holder behavior. FraudMAP's Software-as-a-Service delivery model makes it quick to deploy and d decreases the time, cost and resources needed to maintain the analytics tool.

"Fraudsters are incredibly adept at mimicking the behavior of online banking activities and are proving time and time again that they can beat rules-based anti-fraud solutions," said Terry Austin, CEO of Guardian Analytics. "We are glad to see that more banks like Pacific Continental are prioritizing techniques like our proactive behavioral modeling solution to fight cyber-fraud, and are looking forward to working with them to better serve their customers."

Separately, Guardian Analytics, the innovator in predictive analytics-based fraud prevention software, today announced the availability of FraudMAP Version 4 at the FinovateFall Conference in New York City. With FraudMAP Version 4, the company debuts a new SaaS delivery model, advances its proven behavioral analytics capabilities, adds features to simplify fraud investigations, and offers new flexible packages to match budget and feature needs. As a SaaS solution, FraudMAP is easy and fast to deploy and requires minimal IT resources, enabling financial institutions of all sizes to benefit from the holistic online fraud protection needed to address the growing threat of online banking cyber crime and avoid millions of dollars of losses.

"Financial institutions of all sizes are under attack by worldwide crime rings with more manpower and financial resources than banks will ever have," said George Tubin, senior research director, Tower Group. "An effective approach to protect against the many different types of online fraud is through a deep understanding of legitimate customer behavior. Behavioral analytics-based solutions which are affordable and easy to maintain will help to protect small and medium financial institutions that are particularly strained for resources."

SaaS delivery model - low cost to deploy, no cost to maintain

With FraudMAP Version 4, Guardian Analytics is launching its SaaS delivery model, reducing the time and resources required for financial services companies to deploy FraudMAP. Implementation is simple and requires little to no IT support, with customers up and running in as little as one week in Guardian Analytics' SAS70 Type II certified environment. Eliminating the need for ongoing IT support, the Guardian Analytics Network Operations Center staff provides complete maintenance services, monitoring FraudMAP 24x7 and continually tuning for performance, availability and security

In addition to the SaaS delivery model, FraudMAP Version 4 boasts significant new features in the FraudMAP Risk Engine and FraudMAP Risk Application including:

* Enhanced Dynamic Account ModelingTM: Guardian Analytics has advanced its proven behavioral analytics technology that distinguishes between legitimate and suspicious activity during online banking sessions. New capabilities go deeper into analyzing the characteristics of individual account holder behavior, and determining the risk of end user activities such as user maintenance, transaction types, amounts, payees, and more. Because FraudMAP is looking for deviations from expected account holder behavior from login through transactions and not just for specific fraud patterns or attack types, it proactively detects the widest array of business and retail account takeover and fraud attempts, including the most sophisticated forms of Man in the Browser.
* Risk impact analysis and trending: A new dashboard provides a quick and comprehensive view of current risks account holder activity and current risks while advanced reporting provides new deeper visibility into the sources of risk, how deeply a given risk has penetrated the online account base and how risks are trending. Data and analysis on user activity, IP addresses, networks and locations allow financial institutions to more proactively identify issues and put strategies in place to monitor and mitigate threats.
* User defined alerts: To complement the alerts generated by FraudMAP, users can define their own criteria to be used to generate alerts, allowing institutions to highlight short-term threats that are important to monitor such as user activity, IP addresses, devices, and transaction types.
* New tools to increase user productivity: Enhanced search, filtering, Fraud Match, and new visual analytics make it simpler and faster to identify top priority risks and provide more actionable business-level information to investigate potential fraudulent activity within and across accounts to proactively stop ACH, Wire, Bill Pay, and other forms of online and offline fraud.
* Insights into online banking channel usage and online behavior: Version 4 aggregates online customer behavior data to provide product managers and marketing teams with information on online adoption and feature usage helping them to make better business decisions about website functionality.


"The assaults from cyber criminals are creating an avalanche of costs stemming from fraud losses, investigation, remediation, customer churn and reputation damage," said Terry Austin, CEO of Guardian Analytics. "Criminals are now targeting regional and community banks, and by making advanced protection accessible and available to all institutions, we can help them instantly and transparently protect all of their online customers and the future of their businesses."

Availability and Pricing

FraudMAP Version 4 has two unique applications, FraudMAP for Retail Banking and FraudMAP for Business Banking which are both available immediately. Pricing for smaller institutions starts at less than $1,000 per month. Each application is available in multiple editions: Prevention, Analysis, and Interactive, allowing financial institutions to select the offering most appropriate for their budget and business needs.

Comments: (0)