FlareSystems: FinTech Forum Best Sales Pitch Award

In a forum, a member posts an ad claiming that they were able to bypass bank customers’ security questions. Within the following hours, FlareSystems alerts its client and tries to block the flaws. Once the flaws are blocked, the member removes their ad. Three days later, another ad will be posted showing that there are errors in the bank’s update. FlareSystems contacts the institution again.

FlareSystems fights financial crimes by providing its clients with maximum coverage in case of threat. “Our clients are mostly financial institutions, banks and insurers, says David Hétu, Ph.D. in Criminology, company CRO and co-founder. There are so many active offenders on the Internet leaving so many traces of their online activities that it is virtually impossible to collect them all. Therefore, we focus on a subgroup of offenders that specifically aim the financial field. We monitor all the major platforms where they can be active, from discussion forums to illicit markets, stolen credit card reseller sites, public chat rooms and paste sites. We collect lots of data on offenders weekly.”

As a member of In-Sec-M since the fall, FlareSystems believes that In-Sec-M offers networking opportunities essential to its growth: “We are a start-up company and we want to connect with potential customers and other players in the cybersecurity community to understand the different threats and discover new solutions.”

David Hétu adds: “Today, our team has 12 employees in Montreal. We won the best sales pitch award at the FinTech Forum this fall. We competed against several well-funded companies and won first place with a prize of $25,000 by demonstrating the value of our contribution and the drive of our growing business.”

Several challenges and projects await FlareSystems in 2020. “We are working on getting the best possible coverage for online offenders’ activities. As they constantly change platforms and publish in various languages, it is important to increase the number of sources and develop translation tools. Collecting and analyzing as much data as possible, in real time, is a constant challenge.”

As part of our future projects, the company plans on further developing artificial intelligence in order to automate the analysis of the offenders’ level of danger and create their profiles.