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Pindrop Security: The Phone Fraud Experts

Pindrop Security has developed a breakthrough caller-ID product that helps detect, report and mitigate phone fraud. We have developed a patent-pending solution that can identify key attributes of any phone call including the device used, ID, call path, and geographic point of origin. Look at it as a call “fingerprint” that helps clients identify and avoid fraud.

Pindrop is in both the a16z and JC2Ventures portfolios.

 

Pindrop is focused on bringing trust back to the telephone. Telephony has long been viewed as a trusted communication medium and is used by organizations and individuals to conduct important transactions. For example, customers activate their credit card using their phone and on the banks end, Caller-ID or Automatic Number Identification (ANI) is used to determine if it is the right customer. Essentially, Caller-ID or ANI provides the caller’s phone number (e.g., 1-404-555-0000). However, this information is limited and can be easily manipulated, leaving such services completely broken.

Threats

  • Voice Phishing
  • Social engineering
  • Account takeover
  • Fake card activation
  • Fraudulent transactions
  • Fake authentication

To address this pindrop developed a breakthrough Caller-ID alternative. It is based on research that shows that every phone call has a fingerprint hidden away in its audio. This fingerprint reveals many aspects about a call including which phone device was used and what was the call path.

Features

  • Authentication
  • Fraud Detection
  • Reporting
  • Enterprise Integration
  • Workflow Management
  • SaaS or On-premise

Learn more here: http://pindropsecurity.com/ 

Track the most disruptive technologies by diving into our categorized index:

Artificial Intelligence Companies | Big Data Companies | Business Intelligence Companies | Cybersecurity Companies | Cloud Computing Companies | Collaborative Tool Companies | Infrastructure Companies | IoT Companies | Mobile Companies | Robotics Companies | Services Companies | Tech Titans | VC, PE and Finance Companies

OpenGov: On Track To Lead Market In Financial Transparency and BI for Governments

With this post we are initiating coverage of OpenGov, the award-winning, web-based platform for governments that enables governments and citizens to easily access, explore, and share finance and budget information.

There are many other players in this field, but we believe OpenGov now has what it takes to be the market leader and strongly believe they should be evaluated by any government who is seeking solutions in this domain. Here is more on why:

  • OpenGov’s platform is easy to use, both for governments and their citizens.
  • Their platform is highly functional, enabling access to data, including data currently housed in legacy accounting systems (many of which would require special expertise to retrieve the data without OpenGov).
  • Functionality also includes the ability to analyze data, both for governments and citizens. The visualizations of OpenGov are dynamic and compelling and convey very relevant knowledge.
  • It is incredibly fast and easy to get started with OpenGov

Besides these compelling points, OpenGov CEO Zachary Bookman announced a $15M investment by Andreessen Horowitz. They are also in John Chamber’s VC portfolio.

This puts not just cash in their war chest, but it gives them the experience of a deeply trusted network of leaders who get strongly behind any firm they invest in.Some context and a bit of the views of Zach are in this video:

Here is more from their CEO’s blog post on a funding round:

When we co-founded OpenGov two years ago, I was living in a shipping container in Afghanistan while serving as an advisor on the Anti-Corruption Task Force. My partners were technologists from Stanford University and together we embarked on a mission—to build the most powerful web-based business intelligence platform for the world’s most important industry: government.

More than any other industry, government provides services that affect our lives. Yet governments remain the most underserved by technology. For example, the state-of-the-art in financial communication consists of multi-hundred page budget PDFs hanging on government websites (or Excel spreadsheets with tens of thousands of rows of accounting data). We decided to dive in, because governments represent a huge market and because more transparency and better BI will benefit communities across the country.

State and local governments in the U.S. spend approximately $3.7 trillion. The federal government spends $3.5 trillion. Few people know where the money goes or even how their governments work. That’s a problem for democracy. Citizens need to work with their governments in relationships of trust and understanding.

On the inside, senior executives running organizations are charged with tremendous responsibility. These professionals need access to financial data, analytics, and communication tools to do their jobs and ensure operational spending stays within budget. Successfully managing departments, large teams of people, and millions (or billions) of dollars requires good technology.

OpenGov improves workflows for insiders and understanding for outsiders. In late 2012, we released an Annual Reporting capability to a tremendous response. The tool allows executives and citizens to trace the flow of revenues and expenses—budgeted and historical—throughout highly complicated organizations, from departments down through divisions, programs, and objects. Governments, including their CEOs (or “Managers”) and CFOs (or “Finance Directors”), across the globe took interest in the offering and shared with us feedback and other needs we could address.

OpenGov is definitely one worth watching here.

Related Reading:

Operational Intelligence: The Next Generation of Business Intelligence

Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency

Four Steps to Make Your Business Intelligence Teams More Relevant

Track the most disruptive technologies by diving into our categorized index:

Artificial Intelligence Companies | Big Data Companies | Business Intelligence Companies | Cybersecurity Companies | Cloud Computing Companies | Collaborative Tool Companies | Infrastructure Companies | IoT Companies | Mobile Companies | Robotics Companies | Services Companies | Tech Titans | VC, PE and Finance Companies

Dedrone: Leading provider in airspace security

Dedrone is the leading provider in airspace security. They created the first automated software platform that detects drones and mitigates all known drone threats.

They are attracting lots of attention in the security community, as well as from investors. They are one of the portfolio of JC2 Ventures, for example.

Dedrone’s aerial intrusion detection platform provides early warning of malicious drone activities and is used to protect data centers, prisons, airports and other critical facilities from corporate espionage, smuggling, terrorism, and hacking.

They automatically detect, classify, issue alerts, record evidence to identify and assess potential threats and can automatically trigger offensive or defensive countermeasures if needed. A software-first approach with over-the-air updates future proofs customers insuring that their solution will stay up to date with the evolving drone market and allows it to be interoperable and easily scalable with sensors and countermeasures for any specific deployment.

Dedrone has an active and growing install base. Some notable references include the Clinton-Trump presidential debates, the Suffolk County prison in New York, the Royal Family of Qatar, the New York Mets’ stadium, and the World Economic Forum in Davos.

For more see: dedrone.com

Uniphore: Highly scalable, accurate, fast speech recognition technology

Uniphore is solving some of the hardest problems in business technology, those around recognition of speech for business needs.

We first learned of Uniphore from John Chambers and his VC firm. His investment in them is a strong endorsement that this is one to watch.

The ability to use speech to communicate is arguably the primary reason for the evolutionary success of the human race. Uniphore’s solutions extend the power of speech to dramatically change human-machine interaction. Uniphore’s solutions allow any software application to understand and respond to natural human speech, thus enabling humans to use the most natural of communication modes, speech, to engage and instruct machines.

We are tracking Uniphore in our Disruptive IT Finder in categories of Infrastructure and Artificial Intelligence. But we know they will apply to far more solutions than just those. They are clearly going places.

For more see: Uniphore.com and:

 

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