Bolster fortifies its key leadership roles with three industry-respected veterans

Bolster, a deep learning-powered fraud prevention company protecting the world’s leading brands from counterfeit activity, announced that three industry-respected veterans will be joining the company across its leadership team and advisory board to aid in its mission of ridding the Internet of fraudulent websites that damage brands and their consumers.

Joining Bolster’s distinguished advisory board is Mark Weatherford, who in 2011 was appointed as the Department of Homeland Security’s first Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity.

Deb Radcliff, the technology industry’s first cybercrime beat reporter and former director of the SANS Institute’s Analyst Program, is joining Bolster as chief evangelist – where she will be responsible for technology and company awareness, community outreach and strategic content.

Dave Engel also joins Bolster as the chief revenue officer, bringing with him 20 years of experience in sales leadership for Zingbox, DataEndure and NetApp.

While vice president of worldwide sales at Zingbox, Engel grew a deep background in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that coalesces well with the unique technology differentiators Bolster brings to the market.

“Bolster is fighting fraud using AI with machine learning and human expertise on a scale that legacy providers have been unable to achieve in the past,” says Engel. “I believe that we can clean up the online world from phishing and fraud sites, making a safe Internet for all. And the best way to do that is with the power of AI and machine learning.”

Weatherford joined Bolster from the perspective of a former customer. In one of his businesses, the revenue stream was nearly all realized through online transactions. This made the organization a target for fraudsters creating counterfeit sites of their brand to take in fraudulent charges.

“Bolster was able to identify and take down these fraudulent sites quickly,” explains Weatherford. “More importantly, Bolster engineers are incredibly responsive, and anytime we had an issue it was resolved immediately. They are in tune with their customers, and that’s the best recommendation I can give a product company.”

In addition to the ability to quickly identify fraudulent sites and report them, Radcliff says she was also impressed with Bolster’s ability to get the fraudulent sites removed in near real-time, thanks, also, to cutting-edge automation and machine learning.

“As a journalist and analyst covering this space for the past 26 years, I can say the biggest issue I’ve seen with brand protection services is that they usually don’t produce actionable reports. The process of taking down the fraud sites is also typically slow and cumbersome due to lack of cooperation between reputation services and the hosting providers to take down fraudulent sites,” she says.

“Bolster’s automated reports to hosting providers are so accurate and thorough that the hosting providers trust that the information is true and take the sites down immediately. The less time a fraudulent site is up, the lower the potential damages are to the brand and its consumers.”