FICO, the Fair Isaac Corporation, is the largest and one of the most well-known companies that provide software used for calculating a person’s credit score. In fact, 90 percent of top U.S. lenders use FICO Scores when making lending decisions. FICO helps businesses in over 90 countries make better decisions that, in turn, drive higher levels of growth, profitability and customer satisfaction.
Earlier this year, FICO acquired QuadMetrics, a company built on research at the University of Michigan that utilizes “cutting-edge technology and revolutionary techniques” in order to predict cybersecurity breaches.
According to QuadMetrics, it can predict the chances of a cyber security breach with 90 percent accuracy. According to Stewart V. Nelson, senior risk advisor at Kapnick Insurance Group, the inability to predict cyber risk causes difficulties for insurance companies to develop actuarial data to calculate premiums for cyber breach insurance and creating risk profiles.
FICO hopes to integrate QuadMetric software to complement FICO Falcon Cybersecurity Analytics in order to create an “enterprise security score”. Just as credit scores are given to people, cyber scores will be given to companies that provide an empirical, impartial measure of cybersecurity. The product will assess and understand the risk of an organization’s network assets to manage risks associated with key vendors and business partners.
According to Doug Clare, Vice President of Cybersecurity Solutions at FICO, “Cybersecurity can only be substantially and sustainably improved through creating a strong ecosystem, and a vital part of that ecosystem is a common rating that all parties can use to evaluate risk.” Wes Huffstutter, CEO of QuadMetrics, also comments, saying that “while all organizations are leveraging both sophisticated software and expert guidance to protect themselves from cyber-attacks, it is increasingly important that other dependent parties have a common means of assessing the effectiveness of those efforts.”
Huffstutter also emphasizes the importance of providing the “transparency, consistency and confidence required to strengthen the entire security ecosystem.”
More about FICO
FICO (NYSE:FICO) uses Big Data and mathematical algorithms in order to predict consumer behavior. FICO uses its software and tools to optimize operations, meet government regulations, fight fraud, build more profitable customer relationships and manage risk. FICO was founded in 1955 and has a history of data and analytics experience of over 50 years. FICO fraud systems also protect 2.5 billion credit cards globally and has some of the largest clients. They’re not only known for their protection, but also the 130+ patents granted for their analytics and decision management technology. To date, over 100 billion FICO scores have been sold, making FICO the most used credit score in the world.
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