This acquisition of RiskRecon continues Mastercard’s expansion to offer a wide range of cybersecurity solutions tied together by leveraging machine learning. The acquisitions started in 2017 with Brighterion and NuData. Brighterion is itself a machine learning platform that Mastercard is broadly deploying within its infrastructure.
NuData is a behavioral biometrics company that uses AI to track bad actors across multiple web sites. Then there was the acquisition of Ethoca, which uses AI to help merchants and banks better coordinate dispute activities using AI.
Now Mastercard has acquired RiskRecon, which uses AI to detect and rank cyber security risk associated with any enterprise, such as existing or potential third party partners. More information on the acquisition announcement can be found in an article by TechCrunch:
“MasterCard announced today that it is acquiring RiskRecon, a Salt Lake City startup that uses publicly available data to build security assessments of organizations. The companies did not share the purchase price.
It’s become increasingly important for financial services companies like MasterCard to help customers navigate cyber security and RiskRecon will give customers an objective score of a company’s risk profile.
“Through a powerful combination of AI and data-driven advanced technology, RiskRecon offers an exciting opportunity to complement our existing strategy and technology to secure the cyber space,” Ajay Bhalla, president of cyber and intelligence for Mastercard said in a statement.”
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group