Today, I’m humbled to announce that Gartner just released its first Magic Quadrant™ for Identity Verification, along with its complementary Critical Capabilities report, and Persona was recognized for the following:
- Positioned highest for Ability to Execute among the 11 vendors evaluated in the Magic Quadrant™
- Ranked #1 across all four evaluated Use Cases (Know Your Customer, Fraud Detection, Account Recovery, and Sensitive or Regulated scenarios) in the Critical Capabilities report
We believe these achievements highlight our relentless focus on developing a product that addresses both current and future identity challenges — and we’re excited to continue building the most adaptable and holistic identity platform on the market to help businesses fight fraud, meet compliance requirements, and build trust both now and in the future.
Today’s identity landscape
We believe Gartner releasing reports for the identity verification space for the first time is a testament to how important identity has become in this day and age.
As AI continues to blur the line between real and artificial, it’s becoming harder and harder to determine the authenticity of the “what” — which makes the question of “who” all the more important. A user may have the right login credentials, and their selfie may match their ID portrait, but are they really who they claim to be? And more importantly, should they really be withdrawing money, ordering age-restricted products, requesting access to sensitive systems, or changing account information?
Identity verification can help answer the above, but only if it’s done correctly. Unfortunately, the world of identity is getting more complex for a couple of reasons.
First, new technologies are enabling bad actors to perform sophisticated fraud at scale. From deepfakes to voice cloning to realistic AI-generated IDs, the world of fraud is completely different than it was just five years ago — and it’s reflected in the numbers:
- Identity fraud cost Americans $43 billion in 2023
- Fraud scams and bank fraud schemes resulted in $485.6 billion in losses globally in 2023
- Face swap injection attacks increased by 704% in the second half of 2023
On top of this, we’re seeing new regulations and requirements being enacted for almost every industry and use case across the board — from age verification requirements for gaming companies to DAC7’s seller requirements for online marketplaces.
With all of these moving factors in play, it’s clear that if organizations want to accurately verify users and comply with relevant regulations, they can’t take a stagnant approach to identity. What works today won’t work tomorrow. And no one knows what’s coming next. As such, organizations need a flexible identity platform that takes a holistic, multi-layered, and configurable approach so they can quickly adapt when new fraud tactics, regulations, and use cases inevitably pop up.
How to adapt in an era of uncertainty
When Charles and I founded Persona in 2018, we didn’t do so because we wanted to build a product. We wanted to solve a problem — specifically, the identity challenges mentioned earlier.
Of course, we didn’t foresee how AI would change the world of fraud or know just how many identity-related regulations would be passed each year. But our goal has always been to build the most adaptive identity platform to ensure that regardless of what happens in the world of identity, we can help organizations solve their current and future challenges.
This is why we’re so honored to be positioned highest for Ability to Execute among the 11 vendors evaluated in the 2024 Magic Quadrant™ — we feel it’s a testament to our commitment as a product-led organization.
From the very beginning, we’ve invested in developing building blocks organizations can mix and match to build their ideal identity experience. This approach allows us to offer the configurability businesses need to solve their specific challenges — after all, no two organizations have the exact same compliance needs, fraud vectors, or risk tolerance. These building blocks include:
- A holistic, multi-layered approach to fraud prevention. Organizations can fight and adapt to sophisticated fraud, such as injection attacks and deepfakes, with granular fraud and risk controls that prioritize configurability and explainability. Plus, they can use link analysis to discover and stop scaled fraud.
- Extensive library of verification types and signals: Persona offers a wide array of verification types, passive, active, and behavioral signals, and third-party data sources organizations can use to better assess user risk. Businesses can then use these verification types and signals to build tailored flows that meet specific industry requirements and step up or down friction based on real-time signals to balance risk and conversion.
- Flexible orchestration layer: Organizations can define custom rules and automate the entire identity process from end to end within Persona. Our flexible orchestration layer enables businesses to connect fragmented data, follow up with users, update systems of records, and more — all without heavy engineering or operational resources.
- Secure PII management: Persona not only securely stores PII, but also gives organizations full control over redaction policies, access controls, and how they use the data to support and reverify users across the customer journey.
In a recent press release, Gartner predicted that 30% of enterprises will no longer consider identity verification and authentication solutions to be reliable in isolation. It’s a sobering stat — especially since Persona is an identity solution.
But Gartner is right — traditional verification and authentication methods by themselves aren’t enough to mitigate sophisticated fraud. The release goes on to say that “risk management leaders must choose vendors who can demonstrate they have the capabilities and a plan that goes beyond current standards and are monitoring, classifying, and quantifying these new types of attacks.”
At Persona, we’ve invested heavily in understanding how bad actors pull off injection attacks — as Grand Admiral Thrawn says in Star Wars, “to defeat an enemy, you must know them.” From what we’ve seen, defending against GenAI fraud and future threats requires a holistic fraud strategy — one that involves leveraging as many signals as possible, combining data to create ensemble models that can pinpoint what’s risky, examining data as a whole to identify trends, and using active segmentation to surface the right approach at the right time. These are functions we’ve intentionally built into our platform to help organizations mitigate current and future threats.
If you’d like to learn more, check out our blog to see how our multi-layered approach to fraud mirrors recommendations in the February 2024 Gartner report Emerging Tech: The Impact of AI and Deepfakes on Identity Verification.
Our ongoing commitment
We have a lot to be thankful for here at Persona. We get to partner with some of the largest brands — including OpenAI, Instacart, Coursera, Square, LinkedIn, and Etsy — to solve their identity needs. Our reviews on the Gartner Peer Insights™ platform show that we’re making a real impact. And now we can add these Gartner recognitions to the list.
But the work isn’t over. In fact, it’s just beginning. As the world continues growing more uncertain, we’re committed to building the most configurable and comprehensive identity platform to help organizations prepare for tomorrow’s unknowns — whether they’re evolving fraud trends, regional compliance requirements, or something else entirely. Because no one knows what’s coming next, so the best thing we can all do is adapt.
Download the 2024 Gartner® IDV reports
If you’re interested in exploring our recognition in the space, learning how to evaluate IDV vendors, and/or seeing how different vendors compare, you can download both Gartner® reports here. The Magic Quadrant positions vendors in a market, while the Critical Capabilities report provides a deeper dive into the providers’ product and service offerings. We believe companies looking for a solution for their specific needs are best served by reading both reports.
We’re also always happy to chat about your identity needs! Contact us to discover how our comprehensive, adaptable identity platform can help you build your ideal identity experience, stay ahead of evolving fraud trends, and meet regulatory requirements today and for many years to come.