Airome Technologies is one of the 10 Most Trusted Authentication Solution Providers of 2021 named by CIO Look magazine
Posted on 21.12.2021 at 11:53
Undoubtedly, the pandemic has accelerated the growth of digitalization. Businesses, as well as consumers, have adapted to the new norm of the pandemic by choosing e-commerce and contactless online services for their essential activities. This transformation is being spearheaded by mobile, as it is the perfect platform to carry out such transactions.
However, this shift has also added pressure on organizations to manage various levels of fraud related to the transactions. What these organizations are looking for is an option to provide clients with a trusted security solution on one hand and keep user-experience in a digital environment on another hand.
This is where Airome Technologies steps in.
Airome Technologies is a Singapore-based developer of cybersecurity solutions for digital banking and e-document management systems. Its solutions provide its clients with a highly secured and easy mechanism to protect payments generated via any digital channels, such as Internet banking, mobile banking, card-not-presented (CNP) operations such as online shopping, private banking, and so on. Its technology has a vast deployment footprint covering 300 000 legal entities and more than 2 million private individuals around the globe.
At CIO Look, we caught up with Denis Kalemberg, the Co-founder and CEO of Airome, to know more about the company.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Give us a brief overview of AIROME, its mission, and the key aspects of its strong foothold in the authentication industry.
AIROME is a young innovative company with talented people passionate about modern IT technologies and the cybersecurity sphere.
In modern realities, we are more and more shifting to digital interaction. Our smartphone is becoming like our third hand. In addition to shopping and driving on social networks, we interact with financial institutions where the aspect of the payments’ security is especially important. As you know, the weakest point of the digital financial service is a user. That is why it is critical to implement strong security mechanisms on the client side. In this perspective authentication is the significant non-separating part of a modern digital bank. But how to choose the right tools, you may ask. Well, nowadays, we can definitely divide authentication methods performed in a digital financial services into old-fashioned and modern. The disadvantages of old fashioned such as SMS OTP, push notifications, hardware or software OTP generators, static PINs, or even scratch-cards have been described many times. Nobody wants to look for their USB-tokens, smartcards or any kind of hardware OTP-token while confirming a money transfer in online-bank. As well, nobody wants to wait for SMS or retype one-time passwords for transaction confirmation or passing the log-in process in online bank. In many cases OTP is not only user-friendly but also not secure as they have many technical and technological vulnerabilities and can be high-jacked via social engineering, phishing, etc. In addition, it is expensive not only for maintenance but the high risks of fraud cases. Do you think that any business is ready to take risks for billions?
Our specialists not only follow the development of the industry but also study criminal cases happening around the world to then refine and enhance our services.
Therefore, our mission is to provide simple and highly effective authentication tools without compromising user experience or user interface for any type of bank client – corporate or retail, for online and mobile bank, online shopping operations and etc.
Describe your top-notch solutions and products that address the need of your customers.
The core solution is PayConfirm – an omni-channel platform that performs mobile transaction authentication signature (mTAS) to authenticate or confirm any type of operations, including transactions or e-documents, on a mobile device.
In the core of a signature, generated by PayConfirm, there are asymmetric cryptographic algorithms, which means that a bank itself doesn’t store clients’ keys, while digital keys — so-called “private keys” — are generated and stored in client’s smartphone and cannot be “intercepted” as well as reproduced by any third party. Because of this, our solution provides clients with a high level of security and an easy way to protect their payments, generated via any digital channels, such as Internet banking, mobile banking, CNP operations, private banking.
What makes AIROME a preferred choice among your clientele over other competitors?
Well, we are informed that there are a number of quite similar solutions on the market. Some of them are made by well-known international brands. As for PayConfirm, it is like a well-proven recipe in the kitchen, where the main result depends on the balance. Our solution is an ideal combination of parameters for end-users as well as for service providers like Banks or FinTech. Going deeper into the privileges for each category, end-user get a better user experience, high level of security.
The company receives 30% reduction of annual cost for hardware tokens and maintenance costs, much better protection from fraud, social engineering, SIM swap or etc., risk-based authentication approach available.
Additionally, AIROME was named in the Market Guide for User Authentication. The guide contains a comprehensive list of user authentication vendors who are meant to provide security and risk management leaders responsible for IAM.
From a business leadership perspective, what is your opinion on the impact of the current pandemic on the digital banking sector and the related market?
Now it is obvious that many businesses are going to transform to digital format. We see how fast retail, FMSG, banks sectors, and others started to expand their online presence. People want to feel secure and safe, but at the same time, we see that this business format brings risks, financial almost. Companies should provide secure services, especially if we are talking about the banking sector.
Describe the values that drive your organization.
We are personally accountable for what we do. Partnership relations is our top priority. We are passionate about information technologies and upgrade our knowledge every time.
In your opinion, what could be the future of the digital banking market post the COVID-19 pandemic? And how are you strategizing your company’s operations for that future?
Definitely, COVID-19 transformed our habits and lifestyle. This became a great impulse for banks to develop their services in hard environment and proper competition. Such a competition will work positively to all of us.
We do expect the reduction of branch-offices and a great shift of new forms of service provision. Little by little it becomes a new normal to pass banking on-boarding or sign for new services digitally, using trusted technologies. We are proud to support our clients in their competition for the leadership in their markets, as for leaders it is essential to provide clients with a better user experience with a highly secure protection from the most popular cyberattacks. So, our strategy is to help more clients to create our digital future – and our part in it is to make this future secure.
In what ways have you or your company contributed to the community?
Being an international company, we do understand the importance of communication with local associations. Airome has a close relationship with local associations in the countries of presence. It is our pleasure to share the expertise we have. Besides, we are happy to support governmental projects, so we do expect that good and protected services may be available to everyone and simplify our daily life.
What are your future aspirations? Where do you see Airome in the next five years?
We expect to have Head Quarters in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, with among the top 10 banks in each region.
