In my role as FICO’s Chief Analytics Officer, one of the most exciting parts of my job is being asked to speak at industry and customer events all over the world. It’s truly an honor, and a fascinating opportunity to see, hear and appreciate the analytics topics at the top of audience members’ minds.
One thing is for sure: analytics are rocking every corner of the world we live in, and audiences across industries are eager to learn more.
Analytics rock our assumptions
Predictive Analytics World/New York: I was thrilled to keynote at this event, which focuses on analytics across the broad swath of financial services. I talked about using the FICO fraud data consortium to determine when data shifts can invalidate the models and, more menacing, when these shifts reveal subtle new fraud patterns that can indicate the work of fraudsters and cyber criminals, who know how to go “low and slow” to evade detection. In my talk, which I’ll reprise for PAW San Francisco in May, I demonstrated how deep-learning algorithms can be used to help detect new fraud and cyber crime patterns, and secure model use.
At my PAW talk in New York it was fantastic to talk with data scientists from all over the financial industry, including many FICO clients. They were particularly interested in learning more about what we do at FICO, and our best practices for data and model governance. It was really a collaborative event.
IoT is the new Wild West
Harvest Summit: This energizing event, held at a “secret” location in northern California wine country, was an incredible mix of big thinkers from a wide range of companies; organizations from Google to Pepsi sent their most audacious, creative leaders to talk about technology and its wide-ranging impact.
I was invited to speak on a panel of tech executives talking about the Internet of Things (IoT). The big focus there was on the insecurity of IoT, and how legions IoT devices can be harnessed, for malicious intent, by attacks such as the Mirai botnet.
At the panel we talked about the volumes of data generated by IoT devices and vehicles, and how can we hope to consume and make sense of it. The audience here was largely concerned about how to harness analytic experts to work with these large data volumes. I was pleased to share FICO’s approaches of applied streaming analytic methods that can compress large amounts of streaming data, to help make sense of these volumes.
Interacting with FICO customers and colleagues
APAC Fraud Forum: At this FICO customer meeting in the Philippines, my presentation highlighted FICO’s advances in mobile analytics and cyber analytics. Today, cyber threats remain one of the biggest risks to all companies. FICO® Cyber Security Solutions and the FICO® Enterprise Security Score help companies to understand cyber risk and take appropriate action. With regard to mobile, I covered how take better advantage of the behavioral clues this channel offers into distress, takeover, or man-in-the-middle attacks.
North American Risk Leadership Meeting: Today’s news is absolutely overflowing with developments and conjecture about artificial intelligence (AI). At this customer meeting we dove deep into the AI topic and the surrounding hype.
Artificial intelligence has been around since the 1950s, and FICO operationalized its use in credit card fraud 25 years ago. Today there are many new companies popping up, wanting to utilize AI in all manner of application areas. In contrast, the maturity of FICO’s models, and our uniquely rich data history, set us apart. New AI companies often lack experience, a fact that poses considerable risks given the general non-transparency of AI models and these companies’ lack of a history in their domains and in AI model governance. Again, FICO’s long-term experience sets our technology apart.
The tour continues
I hope you can join me at one of the following events already on my 2017 calendar:
- FICO Forum South Africa, February 16-17, Cape Town. I’m very excited to present to an audience of FICO’s African customers. On the first day my presentation topic is “Advanced AML Analytics – Best Practices.” My keynote on day two will be, “How FICO Analytics is Changing the Game on Cybercrime,” highlighting our cyber approach, which is both innovative and based on mature analytics technology.
- Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, March 6-9 in Grapevine, Texas. Here I’m excited to be giving my talk, “AI: Less Artificial, More Intelligence,” on how AI systems can’t just automatically solve problems; they need to be designed, built and supported correctly.
- Financial Services-ISAC Annual Summit, April 30-May3 in Orlando. My topic here is “Fraud Detection and Advanced AI for Cyber Threats,” framing the FICO story for a financial services audience.
- Predictive Analytics World/San Francisco, May 14-18 in the City by the Bay. At this conference I’ll talk about FICO’s consortium data, and how we use global transaction data from nearly 7,000 institutions to screen two-thirds of the world’s payment card transactions for fraud.
- Developing Professionalism in Informatics, May 24-26, Ottawa, Canada. As Canada’s government moves to “Digital by Default,” my presentation will show how analytics can manage risk, fight fraud, build more effective client relationships, enhance cyber security and optimize operations.
