A new cybersecurity company spun out of Edinburgh Napier University is using AI to tackle the rise in impersonation phone scams.
LastingAsset started out as a cybersecurity project to protect digital assets, before the founding team adapted the technology to tackle imposter calls.
Their service uses cryptographic encryption and artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent fraud perpetrated by rogue callers who impersonate an organisation or individual.
Almost half of all fraud has an impersonation aspect and criminals are increasingly duping victims by using AI to socially engineer, voice clone and deep fake individuals. According to the UK Finance Annual Fraud Report, £1.17 billion was lost to scams in 2023. ‘The average value of loss in an impersonation scam is £7,448 compared to £549 for a purchase scam,’ the report said, illustrating the higher value of impersonation scams in fraudsters’ targeting of victims.
The cryptography-based verification process developed by LastingAsset can assure client firms and their customers that they are speaking to a legitimate caller.
Having spent recent months developing their product, LastingAsset will now become the latest Edinburgh Napier spin-out company – the term used for new businesses which began life as an academic project.
The project was initially developed by ENU academics Dr Zakwan Jaroucheh and Professor Bill Buchanan. Their team includes co-founder and CEO Nanik Ramchandani, newly appointed Chief Operating Officer Ciara Mitchell and Senior Software Engineer Dmitri Timoshenko.
Dr Zakwan Jaroucheh, LastingAsset co-founder and chief technical officer, said: “Impersonation scams cause untold misery for people all around the world, and this is a big moment in our effort to fight against them.
“Edinburgh Napier University has a strong track record of supporting projects like ours to become major international companies, and we would like to thank colleagues for their help to get us to this point.”
Prof Bill Buchanan, LastingAsset co-founder & chief innovator, said: “In an era of AI, there are so many opportunities to integrate privacy and digital trust into our online world. Our vision is to create systems which respect the rights of privacy of citizens, but where we can still address challenges around financial fraud and identity theft.
“We are aiming to build automated systems which can be trusted from a human and a technical level.”
Since establishing the project more than two years ago, they have been backed by significant funding from Scottish Enterprise’s High Growth Spinout Programme, Innovate UK, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Data Lab. Their work has also drawn award recognition from the likes of Converge – claiming its Cisco Future Tech Award in 2023.
Having developed the technology, the LastingAsset team have begun exploring pilots with early adopter customers – and recently participated in a Scottish Enterprise programme to test the American market.
LastingAsset joins an impressive list of companies that began life as projects at the University, including the likes of Cyacomb, MemCrypt, Symphonic Software, ZoneFox, Mercel and Celtic Renewables.
In 2023 ENU was named among the UK’s top ten universities for generating spin-out firms.