IBM Acquires IRIS Analytics; Terms Not Dislcosed

IBM IBM today announced that it has acquired IRIS Analytics, a privately held company specializing in real-time analytics to help combat payment fraud. Only 16 percent of banks polled in a recent global IBM Institute of Business Value study could detect fraud as it is attempted.  Once new schemes were identified and confirmed, it is estimated that countermeasures typically require over four weeks to deploy1. Existing fraud detection techniques are constrained by the dependency on specialized "black box" models that are hard to understand, explain, and adapt. As the payments industry continues to evolve with faster, alternative and mobile payments innovations and the expanding use of chip & PIN, fraudsters have become more technologically sophisticated and organized, adapting their fraud techniques more quickly. IRIS provides a real-time fraud analytics engine that leverages machine learning to generate rapid anti-fraud models while also supporting the creation and modification of ad-hoc models, proven successful on various sized payment platforms. Acting as a "virtual analyst" to help identify new fraud patterns, IRIS applies machine learning models to help analysts detect fraud and act See full press release