What Is Identity Threat Intelligence and Why Institutions Must Share Signals

The Blind Spot

A bank detects an account takeover in progress. A fraudster has used a synthetic identity to open a credit line and is now attempting to transfer funds. The bank blocks the transaction. Case closed.

Except the fraudster does not disappear. They take the same synthetic identity to the next bank, or a fintech, or a telecom provider. The next institution has no way of knowing that this identity was flagged as fraudulent an hour ago.

Each institution fights identity fraud alone, in the dark, against the same attackers.

This is the blind spot that costs the Indian financial system thousands of crores annually — fraud that could have been prevented if institutions shared what they knew.

Why the Current Practice Is Broken

Identity fraud is an ecosystem problem, but detection is siloed. Every bank, fintech, and telecom provider invests in fraud detection. But their data stays inside their walls. An account takeover at Bank A is invisible to Bank B, even when the same credentials are used.

Deepfakes and synthetic identities are outpacing individual detection. Generative AI has made it cheap and easy to create synthetic identities — fake personas with realistic documents, selfies, and even video. A single institution’s model may catch some, but without cross-entity signals, synthetic identities can migrate across the ecosystem being blocked piecemeal.

Response time is everything, and today it is too slow. By the time an institution detects a pattern, the attacker has already moved on. Real-time signal sharing can reduce detection time from days to seconds.

The OpenID Foundation’s Shared Signals Framework (SSF) was designed to solve this. It defines a standard way for institutions to share security events — account takeover, credential compromise, fraud detection — in real time, across organisational boundaries.

The Conceptual Shift: From Individual Detection to Ecosystem Defence

The shift is to treat identity threat intelligence as a shared resource, not a competitive asset.

When one institution detects a threat, it broadcasts a signal — a standardised security event — to all cooperating entities. Other institutions receive the signal in real time and can take preventive action before the same attacker reaches them.

This is not a novel idea. The financial sector already shares fraud data through networks like FIU-IND and proprietary consortiums. What SSF does is make this sharing automated, standardised, and real time — moving from monthly reports to instant signals.

The result is ecosystem-level defence. Attackers cannot simply move to the next target. Every institution is warned.

How Sovio Sanket Enables This

Sovio Sanket is an Identity Threat Intelligence platform built on the OpenID Shared Signals Framework.

It works as a signal exchange hub:

1. An institution detects a security event — account takeover, credential misuse, deepfake detection, or suspicious activity.
2. Sanket receives the event and broadcasts it as a standardised SSF signal to all connected entities.
3. Other institutions receive the signal and can act immediately — blocking an account, requiring additional verification, or flagging a transaction for review.
4. Signals can be bidirectional. Institutions can both send and receive, creating a shared defence network.

Sanket supports multiple signal types:

• Account Takeover (ATO) signals — when an account is confirmed compromised
• Credential misuse signals — when stolen credentials are detected in use
• Fraud signals — when a transaction or identity is flagged as fraudulent
• Deepfake detection signals — when a synthetic identity or manipulated media is identified

The platform is API-first, designed to integrate with existing fraud detection systems, SIEM platforms, and identity management solutions.

Who Should Care

• Banks and financial institutions facing account takeover and synthetic identity fraud. Signal sharing multiplies the effectiveness of existing fraud detection investments.
• Fintech platforms operating at speed, where a fraudulent account can cause significant damage before traditional detection catches up.
• Telecom providers where SIM swap and credential misuse are recurring threats with broad ecosystem impact.
• Government agencies responsible for population-scale identity programmes, where a single synthetic identity can be used across multiple services.
• Regulators looking to mandate cross-entity threat sharing as part of cyber security frameworks. SEBI and RBI have already signalled interest in shared threat intelligence.

The Bottom Line

Identity fraud is not a single-institution problem. It is an ecosystem problem that demands ecosystem-level defence. The Shared Signals Framework provides the standard. Sanket provides the infrastructure.

The organisations that share threat signals will detect fraud faster, block attackers earlier, and protect their users more effectively than those that fight alone.

Sovio Sanket enables real-time identity threat signal exchange using the OpenID Shared Signals Framework. Talk to us about joining the signal sharing network.