From IDF intelligence to fraud prevention: Israeli-founded Forter raises $50m

Forter uses sophisticated machine learning technologies, enhanced by human domain expertise, Israeli military intelligence and continuous research, to create an ever-expanding identity database, already covering more than 180 million American shoppers.

By EYTAN HALON
Updated: SEPTEMBER 29, 2018 12:30
Co-founders of Forter (L-R) Liron Damri, Michael Reitblat, Alon Shemesh (photo credit: VICTOR LEVI)
Co-founders of Forter (L-R) Liron Damri, Michael Reitblat, Alon Shemesh
(photo credit: VICTOR LEVI)
Forter, an e-commerce fraud prevention company founded by IDF intelligence alumni, has executed its largest funding round to date, securing some $50 million in Series D financing.
The latest round of funding announced Wednesday brings the company’s total financing to $100 million since its establishment in 2013 and was led by March Capital Partners, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and previous investors Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Scale Venture Partners.
Forter’s co-founders CEO Michael Reitblat, president Liron Damri and chief analyst Alon Shemesh, all served together in the IDF’s cyber intelligence units. The company’s innovation hub is based in Tel Aviv.
Forter’s identity-based fraud prevention technology detects instances of identity theft and e-commerce fraud and abuse beyond transactions in realtime to protect merchants during each stage of the customer lifecycle, including login, checkout and returns.
Forter uses sophisticated machine learning technologies, enhanced by human domain expertise, Israeli military intelligence and continuous research, to create an ever-expanding identity database, already covering more than 180 million American shoppers. Today, more than 95% of transactions processed by the company are completed by consumers who previously interacted with the network.
According to data compiled by Risk Based Security, there were 2,308 publicly disclosed data compromise events which exposed approximately 2.6 billion confidential records in the first six months of 2018 alone.
Uber announced Wednesday it had reached a settlement worth $148 million, and would tighten its data security procedures after covering up a major data breach suffered in 2016, during which hackers stole personal information of approximately 600,000 company drivers.
“Fraud is an ever-shifting problem.
To get ahead of the curve and support our retail customers in whichever new experiences they want to offer consumers, we plan to double our already massive investment in research and development, expand our global coverage and facilitate further collaboration in the e-commerce and payments ecosystem,” said Reitblat.
Today, Forter processes more than $50 billion of transactions annually and recently demonstrated its growth by opening its first European office in London, in addition to its offices in Tel Aviv and New York.

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“We’re excited to be involved with a company on the forefront of their industry and to watch Forter evolve as the fraud landscape grows more complex,” said Jamie Montgomery, Managing Director of March Capital Partners.


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