Challenge
Insider threats are becoming a critical concern for businesses. Foreign operatives are increasingly targeting U.S. companies, leveraging fake identities to secure employment and exploit proprietary resources. A staggering 74% of companies in 2024 are vulnerable to insider threats, with cases of employment fraud skyrocketing by 354% over the past year.
These bad actors—often from countries like China, Russia, and North Korea—use stolen identities of U.S. citizens to pose as legitimate job candidates, particularly for remote positions. With the help of U.S.-based facilitators, they create “laptop farms” to control devices remotely, masking their true IP locations with VPNs and proxies. Alarmingly, funds from these activities often funnel back to hostile governments, including North Korea, to support state programs.
Faced with these challenges, Palo Alto Networks, a leading cybersecurity firm, turned to Vcheck’s ID verification platform to bolster its defenses and ensure the integrity of its hiring processes.
Solution
Vcheck’s ID verification platform offers a robust, tech-driven approach to pre-hire due diligence. The solution performs over 100 forgery checks on candidates’ documents, followed by advanced liveness validation and facial mapping to confirm that the individual is who they claim to be. When discrepancies arise, Vcheck’s investigative team steps in to dig deeper, leveraging both human expertise and cutting-edge technology to expose fraudulent activity.
For Palo Alto Networks, Vcheck’s platform quickly flagged several remote candidates who failed initial authenticity checks. This triggered manual investigations, where experts reviewed document formatting, cross-referenced data with state motor vehicle records, and analyzed IP address logs to verify physical locations. Vcheck’s tools successfully cut through the concealment tactics employed by bad actors, such as proxy servers, to pinpoint inconsistencies and identify fraudulent applications.
Through these efforts, Vcheck provided Palo Alto Networks with timely alerts on suspicious activity and failed verifications, empowering their team to take swift action. By stopping these fraudulent hires in their tracks, Palo Alto Networks protected its proprietary resources, intellectual property, and workforce from potential harm.
Impact
With Vcheck’s advanced ID verification solution, Palo Alto Networks has strengthened its defenses against insider threats while streamlining pre-employment due diligence. By blending automated technology with investigative expertise, Vcheck ensures companies like Palo Alto Networks can confidently navigate an increasingly complex threat landscape and safeguard their business operations.