Mastercard has expanded its startup engagement program with a focus on cybersecurity.
The company’s Start Path initiative now includes a “Security Solutions” program dedicated to supporting startups in the fields of cybersecurity, fraud mitigation, digital identity and payment resiliency, Mastercard said in a Tuesday (July 1) news release.
“As new threats emerge and the cost of cybercrime continues to climb — anticipated to reach $15.6 trillion by 2029 — Mastercard expanded Start Path to help flexible, adaptable businesses accelerate how they identify and respond to future security challenges,” the release said.
Among the startups are OneID, which employs bank-based verification methods to provide a “document-free way” to verify customer credentials, and Scamnetic, which offers AI scam-detection technology to protect against things like phishing and deepfakes.
Joining them is Spec, which “invisibly monitors” digital transactions to help brands spot and prevent fraud, bots and abuse, and VanishID, which helps companies protect employees by finding and removing exposed personal data publicly accessible online.
Lastly, there is Shield-IoT, which secures mass-scale IoT networks, to offer merchants “visibility, threat management and compliance” for cellular-based payment devices.
“Security is the cornerstone of trust,”said Johan Gerber, executive vice president and head of security solutions at Mastercard. “It is essential to fueling digital commerce in an increasingly connected world, where new threats emerge all the time. By partnering with startup innovators who are already working to protect our ecosystem, we are accelerating co-creation and knowledge-sharing — shaping a safer, smarter digital future.”
In other cybersecurity news, PYMNTS spoke recently with Belsasar Lepe, co-founder and CEO of Cerby, who stressed that the need to secure digital identities has never been urgent, given the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
“We’re in a modern situation,” Lepe said, “where that same technology … can be used to deliver a better personalized experience, but it can also be used to deliver a more personalized, risky experience, where you’re tricked into engaging with someone that isn’t who they claim to be.”
Lepe was candid about the evolving threat landscape, describing it as “fundamentally unfair and very asymmetric,” where defenders need to be perfect while attackers need to only succeed once.
What’s disturbing, he added, is how quickly malicious actors have embraced generative AI, using it for things like phishing schemes powered by AI-written scripts or to craft convincing deepfakes of executives.
“The attackers have been more adept at adopting these technologies,” Lepe said. “The rate of incorporation on the attacker side has been faster.”
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