iovation CEO Greg Pierson Selected as Entrepreneur of the Year Semifinalist

PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwired - Apr 29, 2015) - iovation, the trusted source for mobile and online fraud prevention, today announced accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY) has selected CEO Greg Pierson as a semifinalist for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in the Pacific Northwest region. The award program recognizes entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. A panel of independent judges selected Pierson as a semifinalist out of nominees from Washington, Oregon, Montana and Alaska.

"This recognition isn't about me. It's about the tireless work of everyone at iovation to make an impact on our industry, workplace and community," said Pierson. "I am honored to be included among this exceptional group of trailblazing entrepreneurs, specifically for my team continuing to innovate to find the best way to stop online fraud and enable a frictionless experience for our clients' customers."

The judges selected Pierson specifically for:

• Driving growth -- Pierson has led iovation into a rapidly growing, highly profitable business. This was recently fueled by the rise of financial services, retail and gaming clients adopting iovation's risk, authentication and trust services.
• Pioneering new approaches -- The idea of controlling online fraud through managing the reputation of online devices to detect and stop cybercriminals in their tracks was ahead of its time when Pierson founded the company in 2004. Today, iovation has a global database of 2.5 billion devices like desktops, laptops and mobile phones. iovation's services draw information from a global consortium of shared data so that devices related to previously known instances of fraud can be stopped in real-time, before having a chance to strike again.
• Investing in employees -- More than 50 percent of all iovation employees have been with the company for more than five years. Every iovation staff member earns equity in the company and has since Pierson started the company in 2004. Pierson personally meets with every team member to ensure they have a strong sense of iovation's history, vision and company values.
• Taking calculated risks -- In 2013, Pierson pushed the limits by working with the technology team to replace their Oracle database with open-source Cassandra. This was a massive undertaking that was so difficult that iovation CTO Scott Waddell likened the process to "changing out a car's engine while driving down the highway at 70 mph." In 2014, the results of the undertaking were realized with iovation being able to handle a 600 percent increase in traffic volume while cutting processing times in half.
• Giving back to the community -- In 2014, Pierson started an annual company-wide volunteer initiative where the company shuts down its corporate office so that employees can volunteer their services to nonprofits in the Portland, Oregon area. Pierson was also instrumental in iovation receiving the City of Portland Award for Gold Certification for Sustainability at Work.
  
  

The Pacific Northwest region award winners will be announced at a special gala event on June 11 at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel. Regional award winners will go on to compete for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year national awards.

About iovation
iovation protects online businesses and their end users against fraud and abuse, and identifies trustworthy customers through a combination of advanced device identification, shared device reputation, device-based authentication and real-time risk evaluation. More than 3,000 fraud managers representing global retail, financial services, insurance, social network, gaming and other companies leverage iovation's database of more than 2.5 billion Internet devices and the relationships between them to determine the level of risk associated with online transactions. The company's device reputation database is the world's largest, used to protect 12 million transactions and stop an average of 200,000 fraudulent activities every day. The world's foremost fraud experts share intelligence, cybercrime tips and online fraud prevention techniques in iovation's Fraud Force Community, an exclusive virtual crime-fighting network. For more information, visit iovation.com.