NEW YORK, March 25, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Authoriti Network (“Authoriti”), the leading provider of absolute fraud protection, announced today that it is making its Permission Code®-based vendor payments fraud protection service available at no cost to state and local governments effective immediately. The service protects against Business Email Compromise (BEC) in which fraudsters hack into insecure communications and redirect legitimate vendor payments into their own accounts and/or submit phony invoices.
Government agencies can register for the service at https://authoriti.net/state-and-local-government-fraud.
"Local government agencies need to do whatever is necessary to protect their constituents during times of crisis," said Michael Cutlip, President & CEO of Authoriti. "Unfortunately, bad actors will try to take advantage of the chaos and distractions. Authoriti’s service directly addresses that threat, and our proven technology is already being used by Valley Bank to eliminate fraud from its customers’ wire payments.”
“Authoriti has taken the bold step to protect state and local governments from Business Email Compromises, a rapidly trending crime,” said Ed Amoroso, Founder & CEO of TAG Cyber, which provides research and advisory services for the cybersecurity industry. “By offering its Permission Code service at no charge, they are helping departments to completely eliminate the possibility for BEC-based fraud.”
According to the 2019 FBI Internet Crime Report, BEC crimes impacted some 24,000 U.S. entities during 2019 (many of them state and local governments), reaching a staggering $1.8B of total losses, an increase of $500M from the prior year. The U.S. Treasury Department echoed the risk in its 2019 FinCEN report, revealing that “dozens of government organizations, ranging from foreign national governments to municipal government offices, have been targets of BEC fraud.”
Based on the Permission Code platform, the Authoriti vendor payments fraud protection service allows finance departments to easily confirm that any changes to payment instructions are authorized, and to validate an invoice before making payments. It can be deployed as a hosted service and smartphone app in minutes, making it highly scalable. With experience securing payment transactions in the financial services industry, the time-tested solution mitigates fraud simply and effectively.
How the Permission Code® Platform Works
With the vendor payments service, vendors simply provide a Permission Code smart PIN to authorize their desired transaction. Because it is originated and digitally signed by the vendor, the PIN can be embedded with both the vendors’ identity and details of the transaction. Upon receipt, the paying agent makes a simple web service call to Authoriti, which validates that the correct vendor generated the code and that the transaction details are authorized for execution.
About The Authoriti Network
The Authoriti Network was founded in 2017 to create new ways of preventing identity theft, fraud, and misuse of data. Our founders have significant leadership experience dealing with InfoSec at-scale in the world's leading financial institutions. Authoriti develops the patent-pending Authoriti Permission Code® smart PIN, which puts control of transactions in the hands of the customer and gives the institution the confidence that every action is authorized.
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