May 31, 2022
Moderated by John Gilroy. Once a week he sits down with technology leaders to discuss how to save money, reduce risk, and improve compliance in federal information technology.
Ep.11 Identity Management and the Federal Government
Matt Thompson from Socure brings a wealth of experience to the topic of federal identity management. After a successful career in the military, he noticed that there was a lot of friction for veterans to get benefits from the federal government. He has been working with that issue of identification for his entire career.
The company, Socure, has a similar origin story. The founder had a tough time establishing credit as a young man and noticed that there must be a better way to validate one’s credentials. Johnny Ayers launched Socure in 2012 intending to make it easier to establish identity. His goal was to verify 100% good IDs and eliminate fraud across the Internet.
Socure has been a ridiculously successful company. This was a challenge that banks faced, too fast and they may not have valid identification, too slow and they may lose a customer. If an identification system holds up the process, it can be described as “friction.”
"I think it's safe to say, well over $100 billion went out fraudulently, during the pandemic"
Matt Thompson, Socure Tweet
Socure has led the pack with balancing speed and accuracy, they have more than 700 customers including four of the top five banks.
Cloud access for federal technology leaders presents the same dilemma: too fast, failed identification; too slow, delivering a poor citizen experience.
In October of 2021, Socure decided to share its leading technology with the public sector. Matt Thompson was challenged with bringing the message of successful identity management to the federal government.
During the interview, Matt details how Socure has developed a technology called “ID Graph” to very quickly look at a person’s presence to determine if the person is authentic. This method has evolved over the years and combines publicly available data with machine learning to make the process amazingly fast.
If you enjoyed this podcast, you may want to listen to episode #8 Data, Diversity, and the Federal Government.

John Gilroy
Has been behind a microphone since 1991. He can help you structure, launch, and promote your company podcast. johngilroy@theoakmontgroupllc.com
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