Socure Workforce Verification detects manipulated or fabricated identities

Socure launched Workforce Verification solution to address the growing threat of employee fraud. Socure’s Workforce Verification adapts its enterprise-grade identity verification and fraud prevention specific to hiring workflows, detecting manipulated or fabricated identities before they enter organizations and addressing workforce risk at its source: identity.

“Identity fraud is no longer confined to the consumer realm, it’s infiltrating the workforce at an accelerating rate and has become a foundational risk to cybersecurity, compliance, and organizational trust that can put hundreds of billions of dollars of value at risk – or worse – unknowingly providing access to your most critical IT systems and employee data,” said Johnny Ayers, CEO of Socure.

“Fraudsters are walking through the doors of corporations, posing as top-notch job applicants with AI-generated resumes, deepfaked credentials, and synthetic identities that evade outdated verification methods or human HR recruiters. As the number one platform for verifying identities across all industries, Socure’s launch of our Workforce Verification solution plays a critical role in advancing our mission to verify 100% of good identities in real time and completely eliminate identity fraud – now entirely critical for protecting this pillar of enterprise cybersecurity,” added Ayers.

Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four job applications will be fake – and the consequences are staggering. HR teams and hiring executives are wasting time interviewing fake candidates, while legitimate talent gets overlooked. Fraudsters gain access to sensitive systems, siphon salaries and equipment, and in many cases, leak intellectual property or sell critical access to bad actors.

Worse still, employers risk violating international sanctions if salaries are unknowingly paid to individuals in restricted countries, triggering potential regulatory penalties. Every fake hire represents real financial, cyber, and reputational loss.

Socure’s Workforce Verification solution integrates seamlessly into HR platforms, job boards, payroll systems, and applicant tracking systems (ATS), via a hosted UX, API or SDK, with complete customization to match the desired workflow. At the point of an employment application, Socure evaluates identity risk signals such as phone, email, device, geolocation, behavior, and education signals.

This early screening blocks over 70% of fraudulent applicants before they even reach recruiters. If risk is detected, candidates are routed via a seamless RiskOS workflow to either step-up document and biometric verification via Socure’s DocV or manual review. SocureID, Socure’s persistent identity token powered by Socure’s Identity Graph, enables ongoing risk monitoring from application through offer, helping organizations block fraud while allowing trusted candidates to move forward smoothly.

Socure’s RiskOS enables the continuous assessment of candidate risk during the entire recruiting, hiring and onboarding process through fully automated pause & resume functionality. Additional optional AI agents and verifications are also available for web-based reviews, criminal background screening, resume reviews and more.

“The advent of remote hiring and new generative AI-enabled attack methods like synthetic identities and deepfakes have ushered in today’s surge in employment fraud, and ironically we ourselves experienced an attempt at employment fraud firsthand,” said Rivka Gewirtz Little, Chief Growth Officer of Socure. “One candidate, who applied under the alleged name ‘Anthony’ had a polished big tech resume, a detailed LinkedIn profile and all the surface markers of legitimacy. But ultimately several red flags emerged and it became clear to us that he was a fake applicant who was likely tied to a North Korean employment fraud scam.”

As reported in the top news headlines, the technology industry has been targeted extensively by the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) government’s fake employment schemes over the past few months. In fact, many Fortune 500 companies have fallen victim to the scams designed to use the funds paid in “salaries” to finance the country’s weapons program.

Recently, the Justice Department announced more coordinated actions to help combat these IT worker schemes including “two indictments, an information and related plea agreement, an arrest, searches of 29 known or suspected ‘laptop farms’ across 16 states, and the seizure of 29 financial accounts used to launder illicit funds and 21 fraudulent websites.” The FBI has also launched several investigations and initiatives to help uncover these schemes and support victims of these scams.

Little continued, “It is easy to see how employers can fall victim to this as these candidates come across as knowledgeable, personable and highly qualified. We are excited to bring the exact solution we created to protect ourselves to the market to stop fraudsters from infiltrating companies, accessing sensitive IT systems, and sending money back to foreign adversaries.”