Exclusive: Google’s former ‘click fraud czar’ emerges from stealth with an on-device AI shield against AI-powered phishing, deepfakes, and other scams |
Exclusive: Google’s former ‘click fraud czar’ emerges from stealth with an on-device AI shield against AI-powered phishing, deepfakes, and other scams
Shuman Ghosemajumder made his name at Google as the “click fraud czar,” building the systems that kept cybercriminals from draining the company’s advertising business. He went on to found Shape Security, a cybersecurity company whose software was designed to stop hackers from deploying bots using fake accounts or stolen usernames and passwords to commit fraud. F5 acquired the company for $1 billion in 2020.Now Ghosemajumder is back with a new startup that aims to take on what he calls the biggest security threat of the AI era: the collapse of trust in online communication. His company, Reken, is emerging from two years of stealth development today with an on-device AI security platform, as well as the first product for that platform, a phishing-and-fraud defense tool called Northstar.
Reken’s platform, which it calls the Reken Private Core, is a system of small, proprietary AI models that run directly on a user’s device rather than routing communications to the cloud. While some competitors, such as cybersecurity startups Abnormal and Doppel, use AI to analyze communications, most do that by transmitting data to cloud-based services.
Sending data to the cloud introduces further risks of data breaches as well as possible time lags that can frustrate users, Ghosemajumder said. Some of these cybersecurity companies are also using AI models from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, which also introduces additional costs. Google and Apple are both reported to be working on AI-powered phishing detection software that would function on device, but neither has rolled out a product........