At the 2016 RSA Conference, there was a lot of buzz surrounding the importance of global threat intelligence sharing. In fact, of the more than 500 exhibitors at the annual conference, 79 companies include threat intelligence sharing as part of their business model. However, such information sharing only works when done right—in an anonymized way that takes into account each user’s full digital identity.

Understanding a user’s digital identity includes taking into account the complex and ever-changing associations among people and their communication devices, account credentials, telephone numbers, physical addresses and the businesses with which they interact. In understanding digital identities, businesses can identify fraud and cyberattacks with real-time speed and precision without compromising privacy.

What are some of the benefits of using anonymized global digital identities to fight cybercrime?

Enabling real-time authentication

Global shared intelligence enables a real-time risk assessment of each persona to help businesses stop fraud and unauthorized access in their tracks. Rather than operating in a silo, by analyzing anonymized global digital identities, businesses can differentiate between an attempted cyberattack and a trusted user without compromising privacy—all in a matter of milliseconds.

Facilitating a seamless, frictionless customer experience

Many forms of security and authentication today drive away customers, because they inadvertently assume authentic users are fraudulent. This potentially entails completely rejecting the customer’s transaction, or adding step-up authentication such as security questions or SMS authentication codes. By analyzing users’ complete digital identities—including actions from different devices, locations and accounts, businesses can place an emphasis on the end-user experience and understand customers are who they say they are without adding friction.

For example, one customer might have a wide range of activity across devices in the same day, such as: logging into social media on a mobile device, booking a flight on a home computer and checking email on a work computer. While these are all authentic transactions, without understanding the user’s digital identity, one or more of the companies he or she is interacting with might flag the transaction as fraudulent.

With global shared intelligence, businesses gain access to billions of data points from other businesses (rather than operating in a silo), and all information is anonymized to ensure consumers’ information can never be compromised. In the long run, this leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction and fewer losses as a result of fraud.