AiThority Interview with Christophe Van de Weyer, CEO of Telesign

Christophe Van de Weyer, CEO of Telesign, discusses more on AI-driven fraud protection norms and the technologies that help address digital privacy concerns in this AiThority Q&A:

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Hi Christophe, welcome to our AiThority Interview series. Tell us about your journey in the technology sector, and more about what you’re looking forward to as CEO of Telesign.

I have an extensive background working with telcos and technology companies across the globe. I joined Proximus Group, the parent company of Telesign, in 2020, where I held senior leadership positions, serving as managing director of its ICT subsidiaries across Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands, as well as chief operating officer of the Proximus Enterprise Business Unit. Prior to Proximus Group, I spent nearly two decades at Bain & Company, serving as a partner for nine years, in addition to holding various leadership roles within the global management firm’s Telecom and Tech practice.

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I became CEO of Telesign in September 2023, and I’m focused on leading the company’s next stage of growth. This is very exciting to me because we are at a pivotal moment in the evolution of the digital economy and fraud protection. Fraud costs organizations worldwide an estimated 5% of their annual revenues, which adds up to billions of dollars of lost revenue and efficiency every year. If fraud was an economy, it would be the third largest in the world.

It’s no exaggeration to say we’re in an arms race against digital fraud. I can’t think of a more noble or more critical mission than combatting fraud and protecting digital identities. What excites me about the work is knowing that Telesign is delivering on that mission, with truly breakthrough technologies, with an incredibly inspired and talented team, and at a time when the risks have never been higher.

As Telesign expands its global footprint, what strategies or partnerships are pivotal to driving growth and market penetration?

We’re very excited to be the leader in the fast-growing and evolving digital identity ecosystem. There are number of key trends and tailwinds that will drive adoption and double-digit growth in the digital identity market from 2023-2026. To begin with, online fraud like phishing is exploding, driven by GenAI that is increasing the sophistication and proliferation of these attacks.

In our recent Trust Index Survey, a majority of consumers reported that they are more fearful of becoming fraud victims today than they were 2 years ago. At the same time, consumers are increasingly expecting seamless digital experiences. Their expectations of a company’s cybersecurity, information protection, and anti-fraud infrastructure are rising. In short, consumers expect protection and when it fails, it can dramatically harm brand perception and profitability.

At Telesign, we have many competitive differentiators that other firms will struggle to match. For instance, we have more than 10 years of data patterns combined with new data partnerships that fuel our powerful artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Our data scientist team works with more than 2,000 signals and 50 unique data partners across the globe to deliver consistent, reliable, and valuable insights to our customers every day. What’s more, our cloud-first strategy and distributed AI delivers best-in-class speed and lowest latency across the globe cost efficiently and future proofed. It matters to our most demanding digital customers how fast a verification is performed as it affects conversion rates. This is why more than 300 brands currently use Telesign’s digital identity services.

Finally, we are also leveraging our extended international footprint and go-to-market capabilities to expand our digital identity offering in the fast-growing APAC and LATAM markets. This is a major growth opportunity for us given that fraud is rising in those regions and the U.S. and Europe still represent over 90% of our total digital identity revenues.

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How is Telesign adapting AI-driven strategies and technologies to combat evolving threats?

It’s crucial to understand that the availability of generative AI has allowed fraudsters to super-charge their phishing attacks. We see it in the data: in the 12 months after the launch of ChatGPT, phishing surged by nearly 1,300%. The reason is that generative AI allows criminals to write far more convincing messages. Gone is the poor grammar. Gone are the poor translations. GenAI can fix all that for those who send these messages. So, unfortunately, GenAI, in the wrong hands, is removing the telltale signs that people used to use to identify such messages.

What I want everyone to understand is that we’re in an arms race against digital fraud; we need to fight AI with AI. At Telesign, we use machine learning, in particular, to outsmart bad actors. Think of machine learning as a cybersecurity team member who never sleeps, who can partner with your team to super-charge your fraud-fighting efforts.

Machine learning can access historical indicators to uncover insights and identify causal relationships between unrelated variables indicative of unusual patterns that may precede fraud. It can continuously learn the latest threats by searching the dark web for emails, phone numbers, and other data exposed in data breaches. It can identify a swath of phone numbers or IP addresses being used for attempted intrusions. And it can use what it learns to assess the fraud risk of phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, and more.

And, in fact, our products do exactly that. Time to learn and protect is name of the game when it comes to Fraud Protection. The bottom line is that, at Telesign, we’re continuing to innovate with AI to make sure our customers can, indeed, use the latest technologies to fight back against fraud.

With digital threats evolving rapidly, what emerging trends does Telesign anticipate in digital identity verification and fraud protection over the next few years?

There are several top trends we’ve been monitoring right now. First, companies want to have multiple verification channels to fortify businesses against the rising threats of bots, fake users, and fraudsters. That’s why Telesign’s new omnichannel API integrates seven leading user verification channels: SMS, Silent Verification, Push, Email, WhatsApp, Viber, and RCS (Rich Communication Services) into a unified API. With Verify API, businesses can customize the verification and authentication experience by market needs, customer preferences, or business priorities with peace of mind—and with automatic multichannel fallback.

A second trend is the explosion of phishing mails and texts – and why they’re exploding. Remember that most successful cyberattacks start with phishing, so this is an incredibly important issue. Now, the purpose of phishing is to steal credentials, infiltrate companies, and steal data. So, it’s important for companies to understand that they need technology in place to detect signs of potential account takeovers. If you can detect when a person is logging on or trying to transact, you can ask additional security questions or take other steps to protect your infrastructure. And, by the way, at the same time you’re also protecting the legitimate customer whose credentials have been stolen.

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The thrid trend we’re seeing is related to multi-factor authentication and the fact that many companies are still not using it consistently. According to Microsoft (ZDNet), MFA was inactive in approximately 99% of successful digital intrusions. MFA needs to be turned on by default to protect your infrastructure. We’re seeing cases in which fraudsters call IT desks posing as an employee, based on information they found on the Internet, to get people to violate company policies and reset MFA devices. Make sure your IT support team members know you will have their backs when they refuse to reset passwords and MFA devices outside of standard, approved procedures.

The last trend I want to mention is cybersecurity funding. As last year concluded, we saw reporting from Cybersecurity Hub and others that almost half of companies surveyed were planning to cut cybersecurity headcount this year; that’s a really bad idea. All you need to do is look at the news and the number of hugely expensive cyberattacks that have been launched over the last few months. I won’t list them here, but there are some that have cost over a billion dollars in damages. So, it’s much less expensive to maintain — if not increase — your cybersecurity funding and headcount than to make yourself more vulnerable to a digital intrusion.

How is Telesign leveraging AI and machine learning technologies to address concerns about digital privacy and fraud protection while ensuring ethical use and fostering trust in digital interactions?

I firmly believe that AI plays a pivotal role in our ongoing battle against fraud. AI’s contribution to security is multifaceted and increasingly sophisticated. By analyzing device behaviors, AI can detect anomalies and potential fraud signals, allowing us to adapt authentication friction as needed. This dynamic approach ensures that we’re constantly improving our security measures. Furthermore, machine learning, a subset of AI, continually learns and identifies new threats, enhancing our ability to detect fraudulent activities in real-time.

Looking to the future of authentication and AI, I see collaboration within the tech sector as crucial. We must work together to adopt highly secure, AI-infused authentication methods that stay ahead of evolving threats. Our vision at Telesign is to develop centralized platforms or APIs, empowered by AI, that can effectively differentiate genuine users from fraudsters. By doing so, we aim to create a safer digital landscape for all, where trust and security are paramount in every online interaction.

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As we conclude, what do you envision as the next big milestone or innovation for Telesign in advancing identity solutions?

We have a clear set of value creation priorities that we are confident will deliver on our digital identity growth ambitions. We will leverage our extended international footprint to expand our digital identity offering in the fast-growing APAC and LATAM markets. We will also continue to benefit from our latency advantage, data sovereignty, and local data partnerships to deliver superior digital identity solutions across the globe.

Additionally, we are continuously innovating and exploring new use cases for our technology. Recently, we have been drilling down on how to inject behavioural analytics into our systems. For example, we’re working on distinguishing between bot and human typing patterns to enhance our security and user experience.

And finally, at Telesign we deploy AI-enhanced models, and continuously monitor and train to stay ahead of sophisticated threats. In addition, we will continue to engage in co-innovation partnerships with our customers and partners – some of the most demanding digital platforms in the world – to remain at the forefront of new fraud protection innovations.

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