Quova Helps Developers Integrate Security and Compliance Features into Applications Using Free IP Geolocation
Quova, Inc., a provider of IP Geolocation data, has rolled out Quova Developer Portal, a Web portal providing free access to the Quova API and enabling developers to instantly build their own Quova-powered applications to the web, desktop and mobile devices.
IP Geolocation data is very helpful in adding security and compliance features to applications. With IP intelligence, developers can integrate data into web applications to prevent fraud, comply with local regulations, target market messaging and restrict or localize content.
To help combat cybercrime, IP geolocation data can help detect card not present fraud, detect account takeovers after phishing attacks, and detect other types of account fraud.
When using IP geolocation data to detect card-not-present fraud, banks and merchants can check the distance between the actual and expected user location by reviewing the Country, State, Zip Code, Latitude and Longitude data fields. More often than not, consumers will be logging onto the Internet within close proximity to their billing or shipping addresses. Logging on from somewhere outside a specific range can raise a red flag.
A similar approach can be taken to detect new account registration fraud using stolen identities or existing account takeover fraud using phishing. User login location can be cross-checked against the user’s previous sessions or registration information to come up with a distance between the actual and expected location of the account holder.
To detect potential fraud from a credit card application, a bank could query IP geolocation data during the application process to see if the IP address location is consistent with the applicant’s credit card billing address.
“We spend so much of our time online – sharing personal updates, doing business, and making purchases. Publishers and merchants need to be able differentiate good and suspect log-ons and commerce transactions. Our new free REST API gives developers access to geolocation data that can be used as a building block to create powerful applications that let businesses, banks and brands know where their customers are and what ISP and organization they are associated, which can be used to prevent fraud, and assure more secure transactions, without accessing any Pii,” Perry Tancredi, Sr. Director Products, Quova told SecurityWeek.
Using the Developer Portal, users can pull geographic location and network data for any Internet Protocol (IP) address in the public address space. Quova’s REST API provides a RESTful (REST) interface that returns data over HTTP including area code and time zone, longitude and latitude, and MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area), network information, and the postal code, city, state and region of any Internet Protocol (IP) address in the public domain.
The Portal provides documentation and code samples for popular programming languages, such as: PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, Perl and C#. Developers can register directly through Quova, or use an existing Mashery or TypePad account to access the developer portal.
Developers are rate limited to two API calls per second and 1,000 calls per day.
Quova’s IP intelligence and geolocation data gives enterprises, large and small, detailed demographic and network characteristic data about an IP address. The contextual location information solves many security problems, such as enforcing download and access restrictions based on locality.
Developers can register for the developer account and free IP Geolocation API here: http://developer.quova.com/member/register
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