Tracer Announces FLORA, an Agentic AI Tool for Brand Protection
Tracer.ai (Salt Lake City) has released FLORA, an agentic AI-based platform that protects brands, large and small, from external threats.
Tech News
Salt Lake City, Utah, October 15, 2024
Located in Salt Lake City, Tracer.ai develops and provides Brand Protection Software to various companies. This is done through the use of AI, which scours the internet in search of sites, apps, or accounts that are selling counterfeit items or infringing on Intellectual Property rights.
Recently, Tracer announced their new AI-powered assistant named FLORA that detects potential misuse of brands, gathers evidence of such misuse, and provides recommendations for action to be taken. FLORA can review thousands of potential brand misuses in a matter of hours. Humans are still kept in the loop to verify the accuracy of results, but Flora operates 24/7 on behalf of Tracer's long list of clients.
"Ultimately our compliance rate—that we believe to be the fastest in the industry— is what customers care about most," said Rick Farnell, Tracer's CEO. "Compliance refers to our ability to take down rogue websites, scams, fake social media posts, marketplace sellers that are selling counterfeit products. Our Compliance Rates are the best in the industry," states Farnell.
Tracer is different from other External Cybersecurity companies. The company uses AI as their main tool to combat bad actors. Tracer aims to protect customers by finding and removing scams from the internet on behalf of brands, and to do it quickly, thanks to AI.
Farnell stated, “for 15 years, the cybersecurity industry has largely been focused on protecting just the assets of companies. What we're doing is we're stopping the bad guys and these networks of highly sophisticated bad actors from affecting customers.”
He continued, “Tracer is an example of AI being used in a sophisticated manner to protect digital authenticity for consumers.”
Tracer aims to reduce the amount of time these scams and bad actors are visible online, to thus minimize the number of people getting misled. Farnell states, “Traditional methods—such as using humans to find frauds—can take days or weeks to shutdown bad actors. Tracer, in contrast, looks to get frauds taken down within hours to days, with our 'agentic AI' tool, FLORA.”
According to Farnell, companies are beginning to see the value in External Cybersecurity companies such as Tracer, “40% of our customers have never spent money on external cybersecurity. What we’re seeing is a dramatic increase in companies and brands that recognize the value of external cybersecurity and brand protection.”
Companies lose potential revenue from scams, since their typical customers get tricked into purchasing counterfeit products that they would’ve otherwise purchased directly from the official company. According to Farnell, “You're talking about millions and millions of dollars that's not going back to companies. We're able to step in and redirect customers from those scams back to official products. It’s certainly a massive revenue loss to companies that don’t have this under control.”
Official companies also have to pay replacement costs, which is where they’ll provide a customer with their official product to replace the counterfeit version. Farnell stated, “Some brands have to pay upwards of 3-4% in replacement costs.” Tracer aims to remove scams and counterfeit product listings so that these scenarios are reduced.
Farnell also noted that by using AI, he’s able to grow Tracer while making the company more efficient: “We've added probably 30% more to the business since I've joined, and simultaneously increased efficiency significantly.
In the future, Farnell wants to make it easier for brands to engage with Tracer to protect their customers. Specifically, he wants to make the process as streamlined as possible for every brand out there. Farnell said, “I want Tracer to be able to engage with the mid-market of brands out there, regardless of category, so they may enjoy the protection that we provide.”
Tracer protects over 150 brands, some of which are listed below:
- Docusign
- Revlon
- Lyft
- Jacuzzi
- Arm & Hammer
- OxiClean
- MGA
- Sun World
- Tetris
- Church & Dwight
- Vimeo
- Vitamix
- WarnerMedia
- Waterpik
- Quora
- Zoom
With the recent release of FLORA, Tracer is looking forward to what 2025 will bring. Next year the company plans to add brands of all sizes to its customer list, providing a lot of value to mid-market and smaller brands. Tracer is also exploring rolling out a new pricing model – outcome-based pricing – whereby medium and small brands, regardless of category, pay purely on performance: Tracer gets paid only when it identifies a threat and takes it down before it causes damage to the brand.
"It's a very different pricing model than what we are seeing in the market," said Farnell. "We want to make it easy for smaller brands to engage with us to start protecting their assets; smaller and mid-market brands want what we can offer our bigger partners. This new pricing will help them enjoy the full protection we can offer via an innovative new pricing model that will make us more attractive."
Farnell is a pioneer in cybersecurity and big data solutions. In 2010 he co-founded Think Big Analytics, based in South Jordan, Utah, a big data market/Machine Learning pioneer that employed over 200 people. In 2014 it was acquired by Big Data solutions company Teradata Corporation. In 2019 Farnell became CEO of cybersecurity and data encryption software company, Protegrity, based in Salt Lake City.
In March 2022, Farnell was appointed as CEO at Appdetex, a brand-protection cyber security company located in Boise, Idaho. The company rebranded as Tracer.ai in November 2022. Its adventurous company culture includes trips for the Tracer team to exotic locations.