I've had the honor of serving on Cyota's board for barely a year, but during that time I've been blown away by Cyota's relentless defense of banks against fraudsters. At a time when phishing, pharming, and identity fraud expose our accounts to easy pickings, the accountholders of Cyota's banking customers have been protected by a formidable suite of anti-fraud services. Thousands of banks--including 8 of the largest dozen in the world--use Cyota to process Verified-by-Visa, authenticate online bank transactions, shut down phishing attacks, and detect credit card fraud in real time. During my service on the board, customers like Capital One, RBC, Barclays, ING, Bank of America, Chase, US Bank, CIBC and Providian so valued the service that Cyota's
account churn was absolutely zero.Naftali and his co-founders Amir Orad, Lior Golan and Gilad Zvi have been sweating at Cyota for years, zigging and zagging through different business models as they crafted the right suite of anti-fraud services. They recruited top talent like CFO Jason Schwartz from Shopping.com, board member and former US Cyber-Security Chief Amit Yoran, VP Sales Geoff Geane from HNC, and Chairman Kelly Doherty (ex Vice Chairman, Bankers Trust). This outcome was not a product of luck.
Congratulations as well to RSA on acquiring this premium property right on the heels of the FFIEC industry directive to secure online bank authentication--RSA has an exciting year ahead. Despite offers from several acquirors, Cyota accepted this particular deal due to RSA's strong brand name and presence in online authentication. (The last time I negotiated a corporate development deal with RSA was in my Los Altos apartment over a poker game with Jim Bidzos, where we decided to spin out his certificate business into a newco, Digital Certificates, Inc., later re-named Verisign.)
Finally, kudos to Justin Label of Bessemer, who chased down Cyota (and every other anti-phishing vendor) as part of a focused road map initiative.
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