IBM Launches Global Initiative To Help Clients Detect Threat And Combat Fraud

New product offerings enhance industry leading analytics portfolio

Anaheim, CA - 16 Oct 2006: IBM today announced a comprehensive software and solutions strategy expected to provide customers with the industry’s most advanced and complete identity recognition solutions for uncovering and managing potential threats and fraudulent activity by individuals and groups attempting to mask, hide, or misrepresent their identities.
IBM’s Threat & Fraud Intelligence strategy will enable five focused solution portfolios with a common, extensible and re-usable technology platform – each tailored to meet the needs of a specific industry or focus area. The solution areas include:

* Insider Threat & Candidate Screening For Government Intelligence & Security
* Real-time Analysis For Law Enforcement Investigation
* Fraud Intelligence for Civilian Government Agencies
* Threat & Fraud Intelligence for Banking
* Threat & Fraud Intelligence for Insurance


In support, IBM today is also releasing two pre-packaged software and services solution bundles, the IBM Threat & Fraud Intelligence Starter Pak, and IBM Threat & Fraud Intelligence Law Enforcement Solution.

These solution portfolio bundles can help government agencies and businesses to match, resolve and verify the origin, cultural variation and meaning of names by comparing and analyzing factors commonly associated with nearly one billion names from around the world, including nicknames, titles, format changes and typographical errors. Customers can turn to IBM’s unique Global Name Recognition (GNR) technology to help safeguard their business transactions, increase revenue, enter new markets, reduce risk and avoid potential problems by rapidly analyzing and verifying the names of existing and potential customers, partners or employees.

“Establishing accurate identities and understanding relationships between individuals is emerging as the most critical principle in corporate and government security,” Said John Slitz, Vice President, IBM Threat & Fraud Intelligence Solutions, “It is the mission of IBM Threat & Fraud Intelligence to provide the industry’s most robust and complete platform to support our clients in detecting threat and fraud, accurately and in real time.”

In addition, IBM is also applying its broad Entity Analytic Solutions (EAS) portfolio, including Identity and Relationship resolution, and Anonymous resolution, to help clients integrate their disparate silos of enterprise information to create accurate and real-time insight, in line and on context, to detect and prevent fraud before it actually occurs.

Customers such as Verid, a technology innovator and market leader in identity verification and consumer authentication, are embedding IBM’s Global Name Recognition (GNR) technology in their products to help establish a more precise profile of the individuals they are authenticating.

“We have been using IBM Global Name Recognition software within our widely adopted knowledge-based authentication service for a number of years,” said Kevin Watson, CEO of Verid. “GNR is a valuable technology – especially in today’s multi-cultural environment. GNR helps us overcome inconsistencies in information and improves the accuracy of our authentication process which ultimately leads to a more positive consumer authentication experience.”

This Threat and Fraud Intelligence strategy builds upon IBM’s Information on Demand initiative, launched in February 2006, to address the growing market opportunity around combining IBM’s software, services, partners and industry consulting expertise to improve clients’ business performance. The Information on Demand strategy aims to provide clients with data exactly when and how they need it to improve their business processes, quickly respond to market needs and rapidly identify new business opportunities.

IBM is also releasing EAS v4.1, an upgrade to its Entity Analytics software. This upgrade enhances ease of use and deployment; adds additional platform support; and extends user interface to five additional languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese), so that a wider cross-section of enterprises, across many geographies, can leverage this portfolio to address their growing Threat and Fraud Intelligence exposure.

Additionally, IBM has also enhanced its EAS portfolio of Global Name Recognition software products acquired during the March 2006 acquisition of Language Analysis Systems (LAS).

IBM’s Global Threat and Fraud initiative is also supplemented by the IBM Center for Business Optimization -- another key component of the Information on Demand initiative. The Center, which taps IBM’s Research’s mathematical modeling expertise, industry consulting savvy, software experts and deep computing capabilities, helps clients process massive amounts of data in order to solve complex business problems. Currently the Center offers solutions that use advanced data analytics to ferret out fraud, waste and abuse in the areas of healthcare, Medicaid and property and casualty insurance claims, as well as tax and compliance auditing and identity fraud/insider attacks.

The complete list and details of the new Entity Analytics Solutions software products is available at: www.ibm.com/software/data/tfi

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Chris Rubsamen

IBM Media Relations

IBM

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