Rethinking Digital Safety: How One Firm Is Stopping Fraud Early

PUNE, India – November 25, 2025

In an era where digital life is simply life, the security of our online financial world has never been more critical. Every day, millions of people bank, shop, and manage their lives online, placing immense trust in the digital systems that underpin our economy. Yet, this trust is under constant assault from an increasingly sophisticated and relentless wave of digital fraud. Now, a fundamental shift in how we defend our digital identities is gaining momentum, validated by a recent major industry analysis. The global advisory firm QKS Group has named Cleafy, a financial security technology provider, a global Leader in its 2025 SPARK Matrix™ for Enterprise Fraud Management, recognizing a groundbreaking approach that aims to stop fraud long before it ever happens.

This recognition marks more than just a corporate milestone; it signals an evolution in the fight for digital safety, moving away from a reactive posture of damage control to a proactive strategy of prevention that has profound implications for the security and well-being of consumers everywhere.

The Escalating War on Digital Trust

The landscape of financial crime has transformed. Gone are the days of simple, isolated fraud attempts. Today’s threats are orchestrated campaigns, often leveraging artificial intelligence and exploiting the seams between different security systems. Attacks like Account Takeover (ATO), where criminals seize control of a user’s account, are skyrocketing, with projected global losses expected to surpass $17 billion by 2025. Scams involving Authorized Push Payments (APP), where users are tricked into sending money directly to fraudsters, are also rampant.

These attacks are no longer just targeting technical vulnerabilities; they are targeting people. Using sophisticated phishing schemes, AI-generated deepfakes, and insidious malware that can operate undetected on a user's device, criminals are becoming masters of manipulation. They exploit a single moment of distraction or a reused password to unravel a person's financial life. For financial institutions, the challenge is immense. They are caught between needing to provide seamless, user-friendly digital experiences and erecting ironclad defenses against threats that are invisible until it’s too late. The result is a high-stakes balancing act where a failure to detect a threat can lead to devastating losses for customers and catastrophic reputational damage for the institution.

A Fundamental Shift from Reaction to Prevention

For years, the standard for fraud defense was reactive. Systems were designed to flag a suspicious transaction at the moment of payment, often after the attacker had already gained access and was ready to cash out. Cleafy’s rapid ascent in the market is built on flipping this model on its head. The company champions a strategy it calls Fraud Extended Detection and Response (FxDR), a concept centered on a proactive “shift-left” approach.

This methodology involves fusing two traditionally separate disciplines: cybersecurity and fraud management. Instead of waiting for a fraudulent transaction attempt, the FxDR platform continuously monitors for the subtle, early-stage indicators of an attack across all of a bank's digital channels. It analyzes a user's entire digital journey—from the moment they open an app or website—correlating thousands of data points to spot anomalies. This is the digital equivalent of a security system that detects not just the person trying to break into the vault, but also the suspicious reconnaissance happening weeks before the planned heist. By detecting attacker behavior early in the digital attack chain, the platform can anticipate and neutralize fraud campaigns up to 15 days before they strike, preventing losses before they ever occur.

“Cleafy is rapidly establishing a distinctive and powerful position by unifying advanced cybersecurity telemetry with sophisticated fraud analytics and adaptive AI/ML within a single decisioning layer,” notes Siddharth Arya, Principal Analyst at QKS Group. This unified view gives institutions end-to-end visibility far earlier in the fraud chain, enabling proactive intervention against malware, account takeovers, and emerging hybrid threats.

The Anatomy of a Proactive Defense

The power of the FxDR approach lies in its ability to translate vast amounts of complex data into clear, actionable intelligence. At its core is an advanced AI and machine learning engine that analyzes billions of events in real-time, detecting hidden patterns and zero-day threats that would be impossible for human teams to spot on their own. This includes identifying new strains of malware or recognizing the tell-tale signs of a bot-driven attack.

However, the technology is not designed to replace human expertise but to amplify it. A key innovation is a Generative AI Co-Pilot, an intelligent assistant that automates the initial analysis of alerts. It sifts through the noise, reconstructs the entire attack pattern, and presents fraud analysts with a clear, concise summary of the threat and recommended actions. This transforms the role of the security professional from a reactive ticket-handler into a strategic threat hunter, freeing them to focus on the most complex and critical investigations.

Furthermore, the system provides “explainable decisioning,” meaning it doesn’t just flag a risk; it shows the security team why something is risky, providing a clear rationale and visual reconstruction of the attack. This level of transparency is crucial for building trust in automated systems and enabling teams to act with speed and confidence. This combination of real-time visibility, intelligent automation, and human empowerment is what sets a new standard for operational efficiency and defensive accuracy.

A Rapid Ascent Validates a New Vision

Cleafy’s leap from an “Emerging Leader” in 2024 to a “Global Leader” in the 2025 SPARK Matrix™ in a single year is a testament to the urgency and relevance of its vision. This rapid ascent in a highly competitive market, evaluated against the QKS Group’s rigorous, data-driven methodology, underscores a structural shift in the industry. Financial institutions are recognizing that siloed security tools are no longer adequate to defend against unified, multi-stage attacks.

Matteo Bogana, CEO at Cleafy, articulated this shift, stating, “Fraud is no longer a downstream event—it is the final stage of a coordinated digital attack chain. This recognition validates our vision and reinforces the proactive model that will define the next decade of fraud management.”

This new model is about more than just technology; it is about restoring trust in the digital ecosystem. By identifying and neutralizing threats at their source, this proactive approach not only prevents financial loss but also protects the customer experience. Genuine users are less likely to be impacted by friction-filled security checks or false positives, ensuring that digital banking remains both secure and accessible. This innovation ultimately strengthens the integrity of the financial system, safeguarding the digital interactions that have become essential to modern life and ensuring that progress in technology translates directly into progress for people.