Episode Details

This conversation covers:

• The value that Forter provides, and the types of companies that they work with. Iftah also explains what makes Forter so unique. 
• The underlying technology that Forter is using, and how they quickly process hundreds of complex backend workflows. Iftah also talks about some of the tools that they are using, including AWS and Apache Storm.
• How Forter approaches the cloud, and how it’s helping them concentrate on the business of detecting fraud. In addition, talks about the types of cloud services that Forter is using.
• Forter’s ability to scale — including how they responded to increased customer demand during COVID-19.
• Forter’s biggest technical challenge that they are currently working through.
• Iftah’s thoughts on the security- speed tradeoff.

Links:

• Forter
• Forter on Twitter
• Connect with Iftah on LinkedIn
• Iftah’s email: iftah@forter.com

Transcript:
Emily: Hi everyone. I’m Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product’s value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn’t talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I’m hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you’ll join me.

Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and today I'm chatting with Iftah Gideoni. Iftah is the CTO at Forter. Iftah, first of all, thank you so much for joining me.

Iftah: Very glad to be here.

Emily: So, I wanted to have you start by introducing yourself and what you do, and then also what Forter does.

Iftah: Hi, I'm Iftah. I’m a physicist of education, and in the last 20 years, a CTO of several companies, mostly [00:01:11 unintelligible] governmental companies, and companies that I founded. In the last six and a half years, I'm with Forter. And what Forter started to do from 2014 is to provide what was, at the time, very bold vision of fully automated, fully cloud-based decisions about whether to allow or decline e-commerce transactions. 

Now, from that time we actually implemented and executed that, we decide very many more than 3 million transactions every day, today, all in real-time without a human in the loop. And we expanded into being a fully-fledged trust engine that gives decisions not only about transactions, but about many other points of interaction with the consumer, for example, in their login time, and in other points where trust decision is needed.

Emily: So, just because I think it might be interesting to listeners, give me some examples of, like, when somebody might interact with Forter or have some sort of action approved or declined by Forter.

Iftah: Right. The prime customers of Forter are the big e-commerce enterprises. Think about the [00:02:42 Sephoras], the Nordstroms, the Home Depots, and this kind of companies. And whenever you press the button of requesting to committing to the purchase and you see this small things rounding on the screen, then it is sent to Forter and Forter within, usually, half a second returns a decision. 

Now, Forter does not act as an additional data point, or input, or score into some system of the merchant. It actually answer whether to approve or decline the transaction. In