Guardian Analytics Positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Web Fraud Detection

LOS ALTOS, Calif., May 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Guardian Analytics, the market leader in predictive analytics-based fraud prevention software, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Visionaries quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Fraud Detection.(i)  In the report, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, Avivah Litan highlights that the Web fraud detection market grew 35 percent in 2010 as cybercrime and malware-based attacks proliferated. Banking Trojans, such as Zeus, spread across the globe, circumventing strong user authentication using a second factor, such as a dedicated one-time-password token, and succeeded in pilfering the accounts of customers — typically belonging to small businesses — often stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time.

"Some hackers studied user and account behavior before pouncing on their targets, and were able to evade some advanced profiling systems where models were not tuned or were out of date. They were also able to defeat most strong authentication methods," said Litan in the report. "Thus, the ability to ward off these online attacks was an important factor that went into the product rating for the vendors evaluated in this Magic Quadrant."

"Our customers say that FraudMAP has been very effective at stopping fraud, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as reputational integrity," said Terry Austin, CEO, Guardian Analytics. "We believe the recognition as a Visionary coupled with our rapid new customer acquisition are proof that our approach is what is needed to prevent fraud in the online banking environments of today and the future. We will continue to evolve FraudMAP rapidly to help our customers stay ahead of cybercriminals and become the heroes in the war against fraud."

Guardian Analytics is one of the few vendors in the report that uses mathematically predictive behavior scoring model that is self-learning as opposed to a rules-based system to detect fraud. Its SaaS solution, FraudMAP®, protects financial institutions and their customers by identifying suspicious activities relative to normal behavior that inform the detection of account takeover and fraudulent transactions. The SaaS delivery model allows for turn-key deployments on a wide variety of online banking platforms, and requires little to no IT resources.

FraudMAP has successfully identified a wide range of manual and malware-driven attacks:

• Account compromise stemming from Man-in-the-Browser, malware, phishing, and vishing
• Account reconnaissance where criminals perform unusual non-transactional activities to steal data to commit fraud in other channels or to plan the optimal time to commit online fraud
• Fraud staging, where criminals add new users to defeat dual controls, add mules/payees to ACH batches, create new wire templates, or add payees to bill pay
• Fraudulent ACH, wire, bill pay, and other bank-to-bank transfers

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Guardian Analytics

Headquartered in Los Altos, Calif., Guardian Analytics is focused on the prevention of online banking fraud and committed to making advanced solutions available to institutions of all sizes. The company's risk management approach to detecting account takeover and fraudulent transactions is built on deep expertise in behavioral analytics, online banking and online fraud. National and community banks and credit unions rely on Guardian Analytics to protect individual account assets the integrity of their online channels and their brand reputations. Founded in 2005, Guardian Analytics is privately held with venture funding from Foundation Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Split Rock Partners. For more information, please visit www.guardiananalytics.com.

(i) Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Web Fraud Detection" by Avivah Litan, April 19, 2011

SOURCE Guardian Analytics