In this episode Frank is joined by Courtney Austin, Senior Director of International Marketing for LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Business Services. They explore the theme of the Digital Identity Summit 2019: Empowering the Network.

Transcript

Frank:   Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Digital Identity 360. We’re super honored today to have Courtney Austin, who is our Senior Director of International Marketing here at the company with us today. Courtney, welcome.

Courtney:   Welcome. Pleased to be here. Thanks very much, Frank.

Frank:   Yeah. This is the first one you and I have done together, so I’m really delighted you were able to join us. Especially in light of the upcoming London Summit. Folks as you know, we put on an annual Summit, it’s global now so just did one in Singapore, we’re doing one in London this year. It’s an opportunity for Courtney, our delegates and customers and really luminaries in the industry to get together and talk about the issues that are affecting them through this constant friction of good customer advocation and cybercrime and friction and so forth. Talk a little bit about the dates for the Summit and what the theme of the Summit will be this year.

Courtney:   Really excited and it seems to me each year the Summit comes around very quickly and the theme for this Summit is Empowering the Network, building on last year’s theme of The Power to Predict so we’ll see how accurate we are in terms of those predictions. It’s a real highlight of the year, I’ve got to say that, for the company and of course the digital community as we come together as we talk about some of the key issues that are happening around the world of digital identity. The Summit is going to be in London. Last year it was in Paris. You might see behind me the little mural where we drew up last year of the messaging that happened across the Paris event, so we’re going to be doing the same this year in London and it’s a great chance to bring together not just the financial industry, but the eCommerce industry, retail, payments et cetera and we’re really looking forward to hearing a lot from all the different delegates.

Frank:   It’s interesting, London is interesting for a number of reasons. One, obviously it’s the center of commerce there and we have a great presence with a lot of fantastic customers, but it’s also the inaugural geography for our consortium model. Where we’ve got kind of a next level of information that can be shared within an industry, so I think it’s going to be very interesting to see how our delegates begin to understand the improvements and enhancements we continue to make to ensure that they can collaborate together to stop cyber crime. Our delegates begin to understand the improvements and enhancements we continue to make to ensure that they can collaborate together to stop cybercrime. One of the things that came out of the APAC Summit that was very interesting is phrases like, cybercrime as a service or bots as a service and it’s clear that we’re facing adversaries whether they’re antagonistic nation states, whether they’re well funded crime syndicates or just very opportunistic and brilliant hackers that are combining and networking and have created this kind of black market business, of how to monetize exploits. I think the theme of Empowering the Network is never more important than it is now because in point of fact, if you look at the evolution of ThreatMetrix from the early days, to where we are today, we used to say “it takes a network to fight a network,” but it’s never more true than today. Without that network effect, organizations are really left at their own devices and sometimes they get lucky and sometimes they don’t. It really does take that cohesion and bringing together of those various different interested stakeholders to make sure we’re able to provide our customers with the ability to fight these networks. Thoughts on that?

Courtney:   Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I love the phrase, “it takes a network to fight a network” and that’s very much part of the theme for this year around Empowering the Network, the digital world coming together. The physical world obviously with what’s happened with our acquisition with LexisNexis Risk Solutions as well, but our customers have seen so much growth as well. They’ve been real visionaries as digital transformation leaders as well, so the more data that comes over the network, that better serves our customers of course as well. We’re seeing a lot more collaboration actually, across different industries and Frank I’m seeing you, I’m really pleased you mentioned it, the backing of the financial sector there as well. London obviously being a real centerpiece for that as well in terms of the financial community. We’re absolutely honored to have so many of our customers actually present what they’re seeing in terms of digital transformation and how their customers can benefit in kind as well. You raise a good point. I love that phrase, “it takes a network to fight a network” and that’s very much a part of the theme for Summit this year.

Frank:   You’re so right Courtney because look, cybercrime has become a multi-billion dollar industry and we were in APAC having a conversation on the fact that just this year, in the second half of last year, I should say and early part of this year, Malaysia has become the focal point for bot attacks where they’ve got bots a service. You come in, I want to do an exploit, I want to do some credential stuffing to see if they’re not any of these credentials have been taken from big breeches work, so I just go to Malaysia and for not a lot of bit coin, I can actually rent these botnets to do my bidding. I think there’s going to be a very interesting theme on that. I think there’s also a theme of the constant customer experience versus friction, that was another big theme that was really prevalent in our last Summit. Where folks said, look, as we go, as you said, through digital transformation, the customer wants a seamless experience, people want to be able to log onto their phone, have the provider know it’s them and not have to step them up. At the same time, we’re big believers that there’s the appropriate point for friction. If somebody logs into the very first time into their account, and the very first thing they do ever is to change the profile settings, that may be an issue. May be a challenge. Speak a little bit to what you’re hearing in that market vis a vis the tension between customer experience and necessary friction.

Courtney:   Yeah, it’s a really good point actually. I’m pleased you mentioned what we’re hearing in the market. In fact, this year actually we’re going to be launching a new version of the 2019 European Cybercrime Report. This is the one that we launched last year actually at the Summit as well and we find all the delegates love hearing data. In terms of how data varies from country to country and what’s happening in terms of the industry and the cyberattacks et cetera. The Q2 report we saw for 2018, sorry the H2 report for 2018, that we released the last couple of months, we saw a huge increase in bot attacks. I think there was 3.1 billion bot attacks as well. So, understanding the attack vectors and where they’re coming in is going to be critical. The European Cybercrime Report will do that, and we’re going to launch that as I said, at the Summit on June 24, June 25 as well. That’s interesting. The other thing is mobile. Mobile is huge in terms of not only the adoption, but the mobile attack rates as well. You could think about how much of your life is actually transacted through eCommerce, through banking, through finance. I spend my life through my mobile. It’s a window to the world and I’m so pleased that so many of the customers that we’re having present, and also the guest speakers, are really using that as a focal point as well and saying listen how is the industry or your particular industry been shaken up by the raise of the adoption of the use of mobile phones of course as well. And transactions, and where they’re coming in. Some fascinating information we get to share and obviously reveal.

Frank:   Yeah, definitely going to be exciting. It’s interesting you mention mobile. If you look, just our own networking, obviously we run hundreds of millions of transactions, billions every month, probably close to three to four billion a month through the network. We’re probably going to tickle 70% mobile transactions by the end of this year. It’s a staggering number, I think the idea of the digital transformation is in full force and effect, people are doing it as quickly as they can and I think it’s a different kind of person, a different kind of user that relies solely on mobile. In many of our geographies, mobile is the only device people have. As you said, the interaction between the digital world and the mobile device is really becoming a focal point. In that interaction, where customers are used to one click buying and one click logins and facial recognition and all the other biometrics, understanding the mobile and the threat factors and vectors that affect the mobile are going to be super important. Very excited about the Summit. Any predictions for the Summit?

Courtney:   We’re really excited about the Summit and I think we’re fortunate to have some guest speakers come along this year. In fact, we’re going to have David Birch with us this year. David is well known to us. He is, I would say, he’s one of the world’s experts actually on digital money and on digital i