RELX Group is set to buy digital identity platform ThreatMetrix in a £580m (about $817m) deal.
The purchase by RELX, a British publishing group turned analytics company, will bulk up its risk and business anlatyics arm. Founded in 2005, ThreatMetrix is a digital identity platform that uses a number of factors like device information, location, anonymised ID information, threat intelligence and behavioural analytics to determine that individuals logging into a service are who they say they are.
Headquartered in San Jose, California, ThreatMetrix has strong client relationships across financial services, e-commerce, and media sectors and offers authentication solutions for account origination, payments, “card not present” transactions and account logins.
RELX says ThreatMetrix’s Digital Identity Network analyses over 100 million transactions per day covering 35,000 websites from 5,000 customers, tracking 1.4 billion unique online identities from 4.5 billion devices in 185 countries.
The cybersecurity company will become part of RELX’s Risk & Business Analytics, which operates in the LexisNexis Risk Solutions group and addresses fraud and authentication challenges using advanced analytics to physical identity attributes, including identity credentials, addresses and asset ownership. ThreatMetix has already been collaborating with LexisNexis, having formed a commercial partnership two years ago.
By further integrating ThreatMetrix’s capabilities in device, email and social intelligence the company said it wants to build a more complete picture of risk in today’s global, mobile digital economy, providing both physical and digital identity solutions.
Risk & Business Analytics CEO, Mark Kelsey, said: “ThreatMetrix is widely recognised as a leader in the digital identity space. Bringing that together with our own strengths in physical identity attributes will give our clients across all forms of commerce and geographies a more reliable, comprehensive approach to fraud and identity risk management while maintaining the privacy and security principles our customers have come to expect.”
In 2016, ThreatMetrix raised $30m in what it describes as a mezzanine growth capital round, with funding coming from existing backer Silicon Valley Bank. To date, the company has raised $91.9m from the likes of August Capital, Tenaya Capital, Talu ventures, and Adams Street Partners.
The company recently announced a partnership with GlobalOnePay, a division of Pivotal Payments, to enhance GlobalOnePay’s online fraud detection and scoring engine, Sentinel Defend.
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
