KYE vs. KYC

The concept of KYC – Know Your Customer – is well understood and relates to new customer onboarding, where their identity and eligibility to receive the service must be determined. KYC checks usually involve scanning an ID and then checking with a bureau to see if the customer exists and has an acceptable profile, e.g., a credit history.

But what about KYE – Know Your Employee? There are several scenarios where enterprises need to verify their employees’ identity, when applying for a new role, onboarding, and when they interact with service desks like IT or HR.

Most employers will invest in a robust screening and onboarding process for new employees, especially if right to work is a concern. However, sophisticated fraudsters are now using Gen AI deepfakes to create fake identities with the purpose of obtaining a position at the company and using that to either obtain financial benefit or compromise sensitive company data. The increased reliance on remote hiring and working makes the recruitment process all too easy to be compromised.

And when the employee is on board, how do enterprises effectively verify their identity if they call IT or HR service desks? How do employees know that inbound calls claiming to be from IT or HR are legitimate? The recent spate of cyber attacks by the Scattered Spider gang in the US (MGM Las Vegas) and UK (Marks & Spencer) has all been traced back to social engineering attacks via helpdesks. An effective KYE process would have stopped these attacks in their tracks and saved these companies the hundreds of millions of dollars they lost in disruption.

Trusona’s ATO Protect service gives companies a fast, easy-to-use, and reliable process to quickly determine the identity of all callers to sensitive helpdesks. It combines ID scanning, device and IP analytics, GPS location, and mobile network data to provide a comprehensive picture of the caller’s identity with an associated risk score.

The new Agent Verify service also allows employees to verify inbound calls from IT or HR before disclosing information or taking action.

Together, these Trusona services give a comprehensive KYE capability to all businesses and they can be deployed instantly via a web portal or via API to internal systems and service management platforms.