The digital battlefield is more treacherous than ever. With online fraud surging and cybercriminals growing more sophisticated, brands are constantly struggling to protect their authenticity.

Focus IP Inc.’s (Tracer’s) brand protection platform, Flora, solves that problem by revitalizing brand protection strategies using computer vision, synthetic data and natural language processing, according to Rick Farnell (pictured), chief executive officer of Tracer.

“I think that there is a war for authenticity in the digital universe today; social media, websites, mobile apps [and] paid search [are] driving people to different areas,” Farnell said. “Simply put, brands are fighting for their lives and have to utilize much more sophisticated AI capabilities in order to keep up with the threats that are coming after their consumers.”

Farnell spoke with theCUBE’s Rebecca Knight for the Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards 2025 interview series, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Flora delivers accuracy and efficiency in brand protection through AI-driven processes and insight automation.

AI’s role in brand protection

The Federal Trade Commission estimates that business imposter scams cost an estimated $752 million in 2023, further highlighting the scale of the issue, according to Knight. Traditional brand protection has relied heavily on manual monitoring and rules-based detection systems, which can be slow and reactive. In contrast, Flora can identify fraudulent websites, track suspicious paid advertising campaigns and detect counterfeit products by analyzing vast amounts of online activity, according to Farnell. Recognizing its effectiveness in tackling these challenges, Flora received a CUBEd award for “Top AI-Enabled Product in Retail and Commerce.”

“It’s a really alarming piece of the overall cybersecurity market that I think over the next three [to] five years is going to become a massive opportunity,” he said. “That’s why at Tracer, we’re excited about the approach that we’re taking.”

One of the most critical metrics in brand protection is “time to live” — the duration a fraudulent site or ad remains active before being taken down. Every minute that a fraudulent website is live poses a risk to thousands of consumers. Tracer’s AI technology has already reduced this time by 80%, moving from days to just hours, with a goal of bringing it down to mere minutes, Farnell added.

“Every minute that that website is up, in this case, can potentially harm thousands and thousands of consumers,” he said. “If we can shave minutes off of that, let alone days, we’re really protecting that brand from this bad actor using their good name to prey upon their consumers and customers.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage for the Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards 2025 interview series: 

Photo: SiliconANGLE