TrustID Launches; Restores Trust to Telephone Commerce, Provides Banks With the First Technology to Counter Social Engineering Threats

PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwire - Apr 26, 2011) - TrustID announced its launch of the Telephone Firewall™, a new non-detectable authentication solution to help banks and other financial institutions ensure customers are who they say they are on telephone calls, without excessive caller interrogation.

"There are 50 billion telephone calls in the U.S. every year that require caller validation," said Patrick Cox, Co-Founder and CEO of TrustID. "Banks' customers are needlessly 'knowledge interrogated' or subjected to other authentication methods that are not working, expensive and causing companies to lose hundreds of millions of dollars to fraud and lost branding opportunities every year. Knowledge, as an identity authentication tool, is just not predictive of identity any longer -- especially in the age of social media."

TrustID's Telephone Firewall puts an end to that by enabling companies who utilize TrustID's software to validate the source of their incoming calls, before the phone is answered.

To continue to offer companies the leading authentication and fraud-prevention resource, TrustID has hired renowned fraud detection and prevention expert Art Barger to join its team as senior vice president. Barger, most recently senior vice president and head of North America fraud operations at HSBC, brings more than 30 years experience operating banking fraud detection and prevention systems. During his 20 years at HSBC, Barger became internationally recognized for his contributions to the fraud operations and recovery field. Barger developed and implemented e-business servicing platforms and a Fraud Management System currently utilized globally by HSBC.

"Art is a tremendous addition to the TrustID team. His years of executive experience in banking -- along with his deep understanding of bank operations, fraud mitigation and risk management -- make him a key resource for our customers' success," said Cox. "Art will help take our business to the next level by assisting banks with their authentication and security implementations and help TrustID's customers reduce their costs and grow their revenues while improving their brand through reduced customer knowledge interrogation."

"Most banks and companies are heavily focused on web-related fraud and on-line authentication," said Art Barger, TrustID's new senior vice president. "But the real threat is the telephone channel. Criminals are using the telephone channel to gain information and the account control required to perpetrate fraud over other channels, including the Internet. Current authentication methods are expensive, intrusive to customers and ineffective. The best investment a bank can make in securing their Internet channel is a caller-transparent and highly effective telephone authentication process such as the Telephone Firewall. The reason I left banking after 30 years to join TrustID is because we can fix this problem."

At TrustID, Barger will leverage his experience in mitigating fraud in the financial, telecom, healthcare, and retail industries, which he has gained through career and service experience on boards and committees including the MasterCard Global Fraud Committee. Barger also serves as a Board Member for United Way of Monterey County.

About TrustID
Founded in 2007, TrustID helps financial institutions and other enterprises conducting telephone-based commerce combat the growing threat of Caller ID and ANI Spoofing. The first technology to address telephone originated social engineering security threats, TrustID's patent-pending Telephone Firewall™ accelerates the authentication process to pre-transaction. For more information, visit www.trustid.com.