ATLANTA -- Cyber criminals are targeting Atlanta bank accounts, credit cards and identities. In fact, the metro area ranks among the most targeted in the country.
However Atlanta also boasts the next generation of cyber-crime fighters.
On Wednesday, one of them got the green light to stop thieves.
Inside a Georgia Tech classroom, big ideas meet big money. At the Demo Day" finale, five student teams presented their inventions to fight cyber crime.
A group of venture capitalists – with the power to put them in business – chose a winner.
“We’re able to very efficiently deploy a little bit of capital to a promising entrepreneur, help them develop those ideas," venture capitalist Paul Conley of Paladin Capital Group said. "The ones that really achieve some traction or commercial success, we like to get behind and back them all the way as far as we can take them.”
“America spends more on healthcare than any other nation in the world today,” Musheer Ahmad said.
Ahmad presented his program, Fraudscope, to target healthcare fraud. Specifically, he’s going after criminals who file fake medical claims for money.
“This causes the cost of healthcare to go up in America for everyone,” Ahmad said.
His program offers a series of checks and balances that could deter billions lost to hackers. His software puts claims through an intelligence test, seeking red flags typical of fraud.
He tested the program on two years of Medicare claims.
“Detection techniques are not able to detect up to 95 percent of existing fraud," he said. "So my research actually goes ahead and I currently identified the fraud so we can stop the bad guys.”
The idea won the attention of the investors who awarded Ahmed first place – and a check. It’s money invested in his new company three weeks before he receives his Ph.D.
“I'm going to be working on this full-time, starting a company commercializing this technology," he said. "We already have a patent on this technology. So we will go ahead and roll out a product and sell it to insurance companies. We will make sure everyone in America benefits with lower healthcare costs.”
