Writer: Jordan Sprogis
Editor: Lillian Castro
Reviewer: Cristian Lopez
TL; DR: Just as cyberattackers get smarter and employ new methods each day, our data protection strategies must also evolve. (After all, you wouldn’t bring a knife to a gunfight.) This is what CHEQ stands by, too. CHEQ is a cybersecurity organization focused on the go-to-market security (GTMSec) process to protect metrics, marketing efforts, and customer data from potential online threats. We talked with Chief Product Officer Assaf Dar about how CHEQ aims to protect the customer journey — from product launch and engagement to final conversion.
Cyberattackers don’t wait for the cover of night to scare you like those imaginary monsters under your bed or in your closet. Cyberattackers are real — and they pose a constant threat to your security.
A few months ago, I purchased concert tickets on Ticketmaster. Last week, I received a letter from Ticketmaster saying they’ve just undergone a security breach, and my data (including my name, address, and payment information) is at risk.
Want to know what they offered as an apology? One free credit check without score impact. Whoop-de-doo.
The average U.S. business loses almost a quarter of its customer base after a security breach like this. Ticketmaster will be okay, but most smaller companies can’t afford this kind of loss, so they must take proactive measures at every turn.
That includes the customer journey. Most people think the big bad cyberattackers lurk at the checkout page, where they can compromise financial information.
But the truth is hackers will enter at any point in the customer journey, endangering customer trust, privacy compliance, marketing effectiveness, and, ultimately, business success.
CHEQ is a cybersecurity solution that offers go-to-market (GTM) security measures to protect businesses from online threats throughout the customer life cycle.
It uses multiple methods and sophisticated techniques, including AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms, behavioral analysis, and threat intelligence, to detect and prevent cyber threats in real time for automated and human-driven attacks.
“With all of the investments and creativity that go into the customer journey, it’s also a significant vulnerability for the organization,” explained Assaf Dar, Chief Product Officer at CHEQ. “It’s important to accurately identify threats — such as bots and malicious or fraudulent users — without compromising performance or user experience.”
Evolving Threats in GTM Security
If you’re not in marketing, “go-to-market” may sound like a fancy buzzword, but it’s a way to define a strategy.
GTM describes how an organization engages with its customers to convince them to buy its products or services. It strategically follows and creates the path of the customer journey from engagement to final conversion.
Cybercriminals can attack or infiltrate in numerous ways, each with various sub-techniques. Assaf believes two main strategic reasons exist for this: our shift to digital-only platforms and the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence.
Problem #1: Digital Transformation
Data and analysis are essential for everything businesses do online, from experimentation and optimization to forecasting and decision-making.
Unfortunately, digital transformation — transitioning from in-person to online learning about products and services — is changing how we safeguard our data.
Assaf likened it to a retailer that may promote their current products on its eCommerce store rather than opening a physical store. So instead of worrying about robberies or shoplifters, we now have to worry about cybercriminals.
“The digital experience is a significant vulnerability for the organization,” Assaf emphasized. “If I fail to protect it, then I’m exposed as a business because my entire GTM strategy is concentrated at this critical point.”
Problem #2: Artificial Intelligence
If bots were a problem before, generative AI has pretty much doubled their complexity.
As generative AI makes automation easier, fraud sophistication rises in tandem. So, businesses need robust methods or tools to detect and mitigate threats at scale.
“It’s not just a theoretical thing; we see every day how these technological advancements impact and introduce new threats or accelerate existing ones,” Assaf said.
Another significant impact is the threat of synthetic identities. Generative AI makes it easy to create synthetic identities that can be used for misleading and malicious purposes, such as disinformation campaigns and fake reviews.
“Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated because they’re leveraging AI,” Assaf noted. “So you also have to adopt advanced techniques and methods, including AI, to fight fraud in return and ensure your data is built for that.”
Meet CHEQ’s GTMSec Solutions
CHEQ provides GTMSec (go-to-market security) and identifies invalid traffic (IVT) through three layers of detection: bot mitigation to detect and block bots, user validation for visitor authenticity, and behavior analysis to uncover suspicious or unusual behaviors.
Some common types of invalid traffic (IVT) include:
- Click farms
- Proxies
- Automation tools
- Botnets
- Web crawlers
- Fraudsters
CHEQ enhances customer data by employing thousands of real-time techniques for each user session, all while prioritizing a seamless and non-intrusive user experience
“This is what go-to-market security is about — the ability to accurately detect threats in a way that doesn’t negatively impact business efforts and is impactful for both business and security teams,” Assaf added.
Here’s a glance at some of the techniques CHEQ uses:
- HTTP Techniques: Analyzing server-side signals using the HTTP Protocol
- STUN/DNS Techniques: Revealing masked users’ IP addresses
- JS Techniques: Testing user browser data with dynamic JavaScript
- TCP Techniques: Detecting inconsistencies in user data
More specifically, CHEQ offers five solutions for more in-depth protection and analysis:
- Acquisition: Make sure to remove bots and IVT from your paid campaigns, audiences, and remarketing efforts
- Analytics: Gain insight into the impact of bots and IVT on digital initiatives, ensure the integrity of your web analytics, and safeguard testing and personalization efforts
- Form Guard: Shield your forms and funnel from bots and fake users to prevent sales inefficiency, maintain team trust, and avoid privacy and reputational risks
- Defend: Protect your website and APIs from fraud, abuse, and bot attacks to ensure that only genuine users engage with your online business
- Privacy Enforcement: CHEQ’s consent management and preference enforcement platform helps to establish trust with consumers, quickly adapt marketing strategies, and comply with global privacy regulations
If you prefer to work at your own pace, try CHEQ’s self-serve protection using its Essentials solution. It has a straightforward dashboard that detects and blocks harmful traffic with real-time insights into your customers. Plus, it protects your PPC campaigns by blocking ad fraud and fake impressions.
More AI Solutions for Digital Threats
As for what’s next, Assaf is excited about the opportunity to tackle prevalent digital threats resulting from the rise of generative AI and LLMs.
One of those threats is web scrapers. While web scrapers, also known as scraper bots, are not inherently illegal, they can be employed for illegal activities. They are automated bots that gather data or content from websites by extracting their HTML code to find data stored within their databases.
Usually, scrapers are looking for ways to gain a competitive edge, such as gathering pricing information from competitors’ databases or data from business analytics and market research.
“Scraping is not new, but it’s an emerging threat because of generative AI. Everyone is now scraping everyone else’s content and information, so we want to know who’s scraping, why, how, and we have to have control over it,” Assaf explained.
Take The New York Times vs. OpenAI case, for example. OpenAI uses internet scraping to gather information, which is how ChatGPT delivers current and accurate responses. But The Times argued that OpenAI’s use of content, without compensation, undermines its business by attracting audiences away from its own platform.
CHEQ aims to detect and manage scraping activities in a way that will allow customers to apply different and creative resolution strategies.
Additionally, CHEQ is focused on making its security information even more useful and easier to access. This may include turning important security data into practical insights that fit seamlessly into the client’s existing workflows.
“For example, we’re protecting the integrity of customer data, and the way it is being used across the data infrastructure, processes, and platforms such as analytics tools and CDPs,” Assaf said. “We’re focusing on these integrations and working hard to introduce more value to the market.”
In today’s digital era, the stakes are higher than ever. A security breach can damage customer trust and hurt profits within moments. As cyberattackers continue to evolve, so must our security measures. Learn more about how you can protect your customer journey with CHEQ’s GTMSec solutions.
