Trying to do secure online commerce with your customers? This CEO of a metaverse security firm might be able to help.

The metaverse has had a banner year. Through digital twins and virtual consumer experiences, the metaverse has the potential to revolutionize industries ranging from electricity to retail, all of which require the most stringent cyber protection.

That's why Arkose Labs, the account security brand of choice for gaming giants like Minecraft and Roblox, who were on board with the metaverse movement long before Facebook rebranded as Meta, has had a banner year.

The San Francisco-based business has just been identified by analytics firm GlobalData as a future unicorn in the cybersecurity field, with a valuation of $447.6 million. Its most recent round of funding was a $70 million Series C investment spearheaded by Japan's SoftBank Vision Fund.

Arkose Labs, or Arkose for short, has clients including Microsoft and PayPal who employ its AI-powered fraud detection. Other clients include health care companies, airlines such as HK Express, and fintechs such as Venmo, demonstrating that the company has expanded beyond its beginnings in defending gaming and social media brands like Entertainment Arts (EA) and Kik.

Other types of growth have occurred as well, as Arkose Labs CEO Kevin Gosschalk explained in a recent video interview with Verdict. This year, the prospective future unicorn expanded into countries such as the United Kingdom and Japan, as well as being the first cybersecurity company to offer a $1 million warranty against credential stuffing attacks.

Learn more about Arkose's progress from the CEO native, as well as Gosschalk's cybersecurity forecasts for 2022 and how metaverse security fits into the future picture. A little background information: Gosschalk was born and raised in Brisbane, Australia, and graduated with a degree in Interactive Entertainment from Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He went on to work in biomedical research, where he employed machine vision technologies to diagnose diabetes early. In 2016, Gosschalk founded Arkose Labs, which uses artificial intelligence to make fraud prevention fun.

Kevin Gosschalk: A number of people have been hired. Internally, we more than quadrupled our personnel from just under 100 to 200, which presents a number of unique issues. There have also been a number of senior additions, including our chief product officer, Ashish Jain, who was previously the head of identity at eBay, as well as a new chief technology officer and a new chief revenue officer.

Then, in terms of customers, we just keep getting bigger and bigger businesses. Venmo, as well as a number of other large ecommerce and financial platforms with a lot of growth in the fintech industry, were recently clients.

You used to specialize on gaming platform security. Have you found another, or does Arkose now feel more universal?

In the video gaming industry, we're quite strong. We collaborate with a variety of companies, including PlayStation, Roblox, EA, and others. We've probably worked with any major game company in some capacity. And it's mostly due to the way we launched the business. I'm a gamer, you know; it's always been something close to my heart, something I fully comprehended. Because our technology was matched with their challenges, we naturally moved down the path of finding them as customers. However, they face the same issues as before: criminals attempting to hack into accounts and steal virtual things to resell.

We've really broken out of that in the last two or three years, and now we safeguard the world's greatest social media platforms, the world's largest ecommerce sites, and the world's largest banks, so it's fairly diverse.

However, the kind of businesses with which we collaborate closely match the targets of scammers. That's who they're seeking to make the greatest money, and those are the companies that need us the most.

In addition, the fintech business has been exploding. There are a plethora of innovative ways to manage funds online. That's been huge for us over the last 12 to 24 months.

In that case, would you agree that open banking is inherently risky?

In the fintech industry, there is a lot of room for expansion. There are many startups and other early-stage businesses that lack the maturity of established banks. Some of the more established fintechs excel at security, and they excel at what they do. However, the nature of attempting to develop as quickly as possible implies you want the least amount of friction in your onboarding process, as well as the fewest checks possible.

Unfortunately, it's also a sanctuary for scammers, who prefer to target companies that are investing in venture capital. So we're seeing a lot of early-stage fintechs struggle, and they're in the business of inventing a completely new financial instrument. They aren't in the business of fighting fraud, so it requires a very different attitude and a muscle that many of them must develop.