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HUMAN’s Guide to the Digital Galaxy 1st Edition: Visibility

In the vast expanse of the digital universe, it can be challenging to distinguish between genuine human activity and fraudulent alien-like behavior. The internet, like space, can be difficult to navigate. However, just as astronomers use telescopes to better understand the stars and planets, we use our technology to provide visibility into the digital space. HUMAN disrupts the economics of cybercrime by using a modern defense strategy consisting of three pillars: visibility, network effect, and disruptions and takedowns. With the ability to verify the humanity of more than 20 trillion digital interactions every week and observe 80% of the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Visibility is a critical first step in how we safeguard organizations throughout the digital universe and make sure fraudsters never have lift-off.

Stars in the Sky

In space, there are objects that are difficult to see with the naked eye, such as stars that are always there, but may not be visible in the sky. Similarly, on the internet, there is a lot of nefarious activity hidden among the digital stars, such as ad fraud, bot attacks, and cyber threats. Every time someone uses the internet, they are interacting digitally. Each interaction represents a connection between individuals or entities across the digital landscape. Such interactions can occur between humans, bots, or bad actors, in any combination. Every click leaves little traces of stardust throughout the internet. 

Fraudsters use that as a backdoor way to steal users' privileged information, serve inauthentic ads to profit off of, and find new ways to make sure the stars work in the favor of their pockets. These threats can have a catastrophic impact on businesses if left unchecked, ranging from financial losses to reputational damage. 

The challenge is identifying these threats amidst the vast sea of digital interactions happening every moment. This is where visibility becomes essential to the ecosystem. What you view, when you view it, and how much of it you can view matters immensely. By using visibility to observe and analyze the digital universe around us, we can distinguish genuine human activity from fraudulent behavior and prevent businesses from becoming repeated targets of these online threats. Visibility is the telescope that allows us to view the stars. What becomes important in the next step is how much you observe and what you are able to do with that information. That’s where we connect the dots to make a constellation.

Constellation of Information

Everyone could have a telescope, but that doesn’t mean they observe as much as NASA. Visibility, just like telescopes, doesn’t always have the same power. The scale of our visibility is what allows us to observe half of the devices on the internet every month. 

In the digital universe, there are programmatic advertising ecosystems that are vital to the success of businesses. For the organizations and customers sake, these ecosystems need to be safeguarded and operate with minimal disruptions. However, due to the sheer volume of digital interactions and how much humans are online, these ecosystems are prime targets for all kinds of fraudulent activity. Ad fraud operations that may not even seem foreign to the untrained eye could be duplicating user information, having bots do their evil bidding or reaping the benefits of serving inauthentic ads. By having visibility into this ecosystem, we can identify and prevent fraudulent behavior, ensuring that businesses are getting the value they deserve from their advertising investments and customers are getting a safe user-friendly interaction when they visit a site. 

The same techniques used to perpetrate ad fraud can also be used to infiltrate enterprises. If not properly mitigated a lot of fraudsters will try to use the same server to launch bot attacks in multiple ecosystems of the internet; if they are not financially deterred or their operation isn’t stopped at the root. By identifying and preventing ad fraud, we are also strengthening enterprise security and preventing potential cyber threats from penetrating partnering networks. That is where the benefit of collective protection becomes an active use case. You attack one planet in the galaxy, we act in a way to protect all planets in the HUMAN universe. 

Exploration Leads to Understanding

As technology advances it will become harder in our everyday lives to distinguish what is alien online. Visibility represents the first step to understanding how cybercrime works and disrupting the economics of it. Viewing what is going on leads to understanding of what is happening. Our ability to verify the humanity of more than 20 trillion digital interactions every week and protect 80% of the programmatic advertising ecosystem is a critical element to collectively protecting our clients and their customers. By connecting the trail of digital interactions like stars glowing in the night sky we are preventing ad fraud and strengthening enterprise security. We are enabling businesses to operate in a secure and trusted landscape, ensuring their success in the digital universe. Visibility is what we can observe around the internet, and our ability to provide it at scale  is why it is the first pillar, much like how astronomers use telescopes to observe the universe before the launch of a  spaceship. This is the initial step in shifting the balance of power for good by using modern defense strategy to fight sophisticated bots and digital attacks -to infinity and beyond.

Find out more about the Human Defense Platform and how it helps us complete our mission.