TBW ADVISORS LLC

Tag: Fraud Prevention

Conference Whispers: All Wireless & Prepaid Expo 2026
Las Vegas, NV August 18- August 19

Published August 22, 2026: ID: TBW2236

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Enjoy the related Computer Talk Radio episode.

ABSTRACT

“The All Wireless & Prepaid Expo brought together wireless dealers, carriers, MVNOs, distributors, repair providers, and telecom suppliers as Las Vegas hosted conversations around channel economics, customer acquisition, fraud prevention, eSIM adoption, dealer enablement, wireless retail operations, and the evolving business models supporting growth across the wireless ecosystem.”

The Conference
- A community of the wireless retail ecosystem including dealers, carriers, MVNOs, distributors, and service providers
- 67% of attendees are retail-focused spanning dealers, repair shops and electronic merchants.
Cautions
- Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
Exhibits

Have you ever thought, I would like to start my own wireless network service and become an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). MVNO doesn’t have to worry about the spectrum, as the physical network infrastructure and spectrum is procured from a MNO (Mobile Network Operator) – like Verizon. If you are thinking of creating one based on Verizon’s physical infrastructure and spectrum, Supersonic Mobile was in expo hall ready to help you. Supersonic Mobile is what’s referred to as an MVNE – E for enabler. They provide technical and operational support to MVNOs such as sim card set ups, billing and customer relationship management, and regulatory compliance and legal reporting. Supersonic Mobile’s customers can access their services via API or a platform.

With over 20-years in telecom by their own account and a relationship with multiple MNOs, Telgoo5 is focused on growing your business. To them, you are more than a number, you are a partner. They understand a MVNE must provide support from the beginning all the way until the solution is live in the field and thriving. BeQuick was on site. They are not a full MVNE but instead focus on best of breed business and operational support systems (BSS/OSS). BeQuick is 100% software based and the solution is a software platform that is carrier agnostic with guaranteed four 9’s uptime. Within the BSS/OSS stack is a requirement to manage customer fraud risk and charge backs. Vesta was in expo hall to not only satisfy that requirement but to remove some of the risk for operators. Vesta manages digital payments and assumes the risk of fraud and charge back liability for carriers and MVNOs alike.

Moving to the customer side of wireless solutions, there are Master Agents also called Master Sales Agents. Unlike the network stack, Master Agents handle things like sales volumes, commissions, training and support downstream. Agents focus on dealers to distribute MNOs and MVNOs networks. Perfect Vision is a Master Agent that provides marketing experts, sales agents and client experts to protect your business. A Master Agents specializing in Verizon, Wireless Masters would like to help you open your very own phone shop! Dreaming bigger? Maybe you want a store to offer wireless and Fiber? Unwired was on site offering access to AT&T, Ultra Mobile, Cricket, Joi and MobileX plus the ability to resell fiber!

In addition to network operators, enablers, agents, the event also featured many accessory providers as well as support functions such as marketing, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and human resources which we cover in their individual domain events. In addition, organizations to support those attending. NWIDA or the National Wireless Independent Dealers Association was on hand. Described as the AAA for wireless dealers, on average they help dealers save about $25,000 a year. This savings comes through 10-20% off of credit card processing, payroll processing, accessories, devices, business and health insurance. For those who specialize in phone repair, Tech Care Association was there for you! Their resources include a where to repair list for all its members as a public service to those needing repairs. They provide training, shop tools, and evaluate web pages ensuring your repair business has what it needs to succeed.

Conference Vibe

An energized gathered of wireless dealers, repair-shop owners, electronic retailers, MVNOs, carriers, distributors, and telecom suppliers gathered at Caesars Palace in the Julius Ballrooms for the All Wireless & Prepaid Expo. Registration was fairly efficient with an expedited line for exhibitors. Enjoy the walkabout to and through expo hall. You’ll notice a lot of accessory providers and vendors for general support were also on site. General support vendors include those for marketing, managing customers and human resources. We once again live streamed from on site to share the experience. Be sure to catch coverage on my syndicated segment on the nationally broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.

It may be helpful to understand some of the acronyms used in the room like MNO’s (Mobile Network Operators eg. AT&T and Verizon) own the network infrastructure. MVNO’s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) offer wireless despite not owning any spectrum or tower/network infrastructure. In addition, MVNE (Mobile Virtual Network Enablers) provide technical and operational support to MVNOs such as sim card set ups, billing and customer relationship management, and regulatory compliance and legal reporting. Master agents aggregate sales volume, handle commissions, provide training and support, and take an override on what their downstream sells.

We conducted research for six additional forthcoming Whisper Reports. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: All Wireless & Prepaid Expo Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be cited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition. The video edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the All Wireless & Prepaid live in Las Vegas?”.

Next Year’s Conference

The dates for next years’ All Wireless & Prepaid Expo have not been announced a time of press.

^*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

Corporate Headquarters

2884 Grand Helios Way

Henderson, NV 89052

Downloading, re-uploading, or redistributing this file is not permitted under any license.

©2019-2026 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, Whisper Club, and One Change a Month, Vegas Convention Library; Leading Professionals, Real Questions, Real Time, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
August 22, 2026
Conference Whispers: Black Hat USA 2026
Las Vegas, NV August 1-6, 2026

Published: August 9, 2026 ID: TBW2226

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Enjoy the related Computer Talk Radio and Computer Talk Radio.

ABSTRACT

Black Hat USA 2026 brought 20,000 cybersecurity professionals to Las Vegas, where researchers, vendors, and practitioners examined the evolving risks introduced by agents, AI, and increasingly complex digital environments. The event held over 100 briefings, 125 tool demonstrations and 120 sponsored sessions. Discussions across sessions and exhibits touched on agent security, threat hunting, governance, infrastructure resilience, device vulnerabilities, fraud prevention, and professional development.

The Conference
- A community of 20,000 verified cybersecurity professionals gathered at Black Hat USA. Over 100 briefings, 115 tool demonstrations, 120 sponsored sessions and 425+ Exhibits and vendors gathered across the 6 days.
Cautions
- Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
Sessions

We were given an advance preview of the talk, “Promptward EOD: Skillful Agent Detonation” by Zenity’s CTO and Co-Founder Michael Bargury. Just by visiting the wrong website you could be compromised. They specifically demonstrate how an agent can jump from viewing a web site to gaining control of your bank account. Now that is scary.

We were also provided an exclusive summary to the session, “Obscurize: Malware for Defense and Counter Offense”. As a response to recent malware, Aaron Beardslee, Manager of Threat Research at Securonix created Obscurize. Sitting above the EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response), it acts as an additional layer. Leveraging the malware’s own fingerprint, its psychology is studied and learned. This tool then makes a sandbox look like a bare metal system or a bare metal system look like a sandbox. This enables the hunter to trick the malware to kill itself or to run thinking it found the goods. The best part? Obscurize is free and publicly available for your to use during your threat hunting!

Exhibits

Fast track adoption of agents has organizations trying to keep up and stay safe. Sometimes in the chaos, the best laid plans go astray. Sometimes, guardrails are not enough. We have all read the horror stories of agents gone wild! Meet PointGuard AI the ultimate kill switch for agents. Avepoint aims to be your unifying trust layer for AI. Their focus is cloud security, safe data governance, and resiliency challenges across the AI stack.

If you are Fortune 2000 and concerned about tracking agents, Zenity was looking to meet you! Softbank and other clients leverage Zenity to understand what data is being touched by agents and what that intent of those agents are. Not only that it will steer agents into the correct direction to help keep them on track.

Mission critical infrastructure for sovereign AI that is private to you. Cogl provides a knowledge graph and enables threat hunting and investigation in a transparent and secure manner. As you might expect, this technology is leveraged in environments ranging from the Department of Defence to banking.

Focusing on the Security Operations Center, BlueVoyant brings what they like to call ‘holistic protections’. Their approach combines internal monitoring and ecosystem oversight. Traditional operating challenges are now assisted by AI driven agentic capabilities. The four risks they aim to mitigate include: data security and leakage, identity vulnerabilities, supply chain and vendor risks, and operational inefficiencies.

Threat hunting is the ultimate game of cat and mouse in cybersecurity. Securonix was on site to share their tool with fellow threat hunters. Whether you want your sandbox to trap the threat or to let it run to so you may study it’s behavior, Securonix provides both options. They even have their own threat hunting team that regularly leverages the tool as they assist the clients security their own environments.

One of our favorite areas is at the edge, connected devices and the Internet of Things – IoT. These devices span from connected vehicles to the simple fire alarms in your home. These devices often bring vulnerabilities. Due to the difficulty in updating their firmware, connected device firmware vulnerabilities become your environment’s weakest point and the point of failure. Finite State focuses on assisting companies reduce the noise as they test their products before shipping. This noise reduction enables their clients to find their vulnerabilities before they ship products to their customers.

Today, a wire money transfer is frequently still sent in plain text. Thus, it is not surprising it is a huge target of fraud. Introducing InoQlate! A Canadian non-profit providing a solution to your wire transfer security issues. Close that door to fraud and stop sending wire transfer information over plain text communication lines!

Seeking a boutique penetration firm? Meet the white hats from Black Hills Information Security. They beg you to make their lives harder! They don’t want to succeed when they try to break into your infrastructure! Providing penetration testing, SOC operations, IR (incident response), and training. Perhaps the most unique thing coming out of Black Hills Information Security is their well known communication medium: Comics! Their security comic series titled, “The Future is ***” available at 750 comic book stores. Not only that, their wisdom is available via a game to make training even more approachable. The game Back Doors & Breaches boasts over 150,000 sales to date.

Finally, the ultimate organization for security professionals, ISC2 was in expo hall. Known as the largest professional organization for cyber security professionals, there is likely a chapter near you! Providing certifications, community and advice with the goal to the make the world a safer place.

Conference Vibe

Cybersecurity specialists gathered on the Las Vegas Strip for Black Hat 2026 and it did not disappoint. Over 20,000 verified attendees gathered for over 100 briefings, 115 tool demonstrations, 120 sponsored session and over 425 exhibits and vendors. The only expected thing we didn’t hear much of is organizations preparing for the quantum impact to cybersecurity. You may recall last year we were the first ones given permission to video expo hall at Black Hat USA. This year, enjoy a first ever live Black Hat USA walkabout while expo hall its open. We once again live streamed from on site to share the experience. Be sure to catch coverage on my syndicated segment on the nationally broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.

While at Black Hat, we conducted research for 9 additional forthcoming Whisper Reports. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel first.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Black Hat USA 2026 Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be cited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition.

The video edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending Black Hat USA live in Las Vegas?”.

Next Year’s Conference

The Black Hat USA will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at the Mandalay Bay on August 3-8, 2027.

^*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

Corporate Headquarters

2884 Grand Helios Way

Henderson, NV 89052

Downloading, re-uploading, or redistributing this file is not permitted under any license.

©2019-2026 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, Whisper Club, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, Vegas Convention Library; Leading Professionals, Real Questions, Real Time, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
August 9, 2026
Conference Whispers: Money 20/20 USA 2024
Las Vegas, NV October 27-30

Published: November 1, 2024 ID: 2053

Readers: November 2, 2024

Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist: Dr. Doreen Galli

ABSTRACT

Money 20/20 USA 2024 was held at the Venetian and boasted over 10,000 attendees from over 90 countries with 80% of attendees coming from the USA. The over 400 speakers and 300 exhibits were captured by TBW Advisors with over 340 minutes of video captured and posted. As the place where money does business, the event brings together the ecosystem of money spanning banks payments tech startups, and capital market. AI everywhere, cross bank collaboration and cross geography collaboration along with fighting fraud were the key themes throughout.

Highlights
- AI everywhere with particular focus on fight fraud along with cross bank and cross-border collaboration was discussed throughout the keynotes and the exhibits.
Cautions
- As with all new AI technology use cases, it is critical to verify the quality of the data used in training the models and identify any inherent biases. The desire is to increase accessibility of the fintech market as opposed to further facilitating biases and disenfranchisement.
Conference Vibe

After more than 340 minutes of taping, 29 videos, a few hundred shorts forthcoming, and over 50 fact checks, our coverage of the Money 20/20 USA 2024 closes. Money 20/20 USA had over 10,000 attendees, 400 speakers, and 300 exhibits full of vendors from around the world^*. Nonetheless, there were no lines at registration to pick up one’s badge. An exciting note was shared during the press briefing that 47% of speakers were women in 2024 up from 11% in 2023. The conference provided a full breakfast for all attendees as well as some smaller stations with continental breakfast. If that wasn’t enough food, have no fear a full lunch was also available to all attendees right in the exhibit hall as well. Speakers graced one of 6 stages with a fan favorite being the Sentient stage featuring Money 20/20’s custom sentient robot, Aiana-live.

Focus on the customer!

No matter where in the world one resides, your life is impacted by fintech. Some experience significant inconveniences such as sending digital money to relatives across the globe only for those relatives to receive physical money. Cross border payments maintaining digital banking convenience was one of the examples shared in the distinguished panel on creating a new language for cross-border payments. This panel featured Ryan Zagone from Wise who presented his company’s solution. Other panelists included leaders from TBD – a block company, Bankaya and Vansary. A key to achieving customer desired functionality is continual modernization of payment platforms beyond migrating to the cloud. This panel included leaders from Wise, Bank of America, Deloitte, and Amazon. A session on Navigating the journey to the cloud featured leaders from Featurespace, AWS and T-Sys. The focus of this session was the need for collaboration amongst partners for the benefit of the customers. One part of the ecosystem cannot go to the cloud if critical components they depend on remain on premise. The migration journey is never truly completed. To ensure your product has solid APIs to easily integrate with the rest of the market, APImatic shared their product on the expo floor. APIMatic increases adoption by leveraging automation to ensure you complete the journey to usable APIs.

One key ingredient every business requires is customers! The panel, “Small is the next big thing” emphasized the sheer magnitude of opportunity by serving small businesses which make up 44% of the US GDP. This panel featured leaders from Co-created, Penelope, and SMB Franchise Advisors. The emphasis was to encourage the creation of a one-stop shop, a single pane solution for all one’s financial needs for the SMB space. One method to extend the reach to additional customers includes embedded payments and private capital to expand the consumer credit space. A panel on this topic featured leaders from Jeffries, Milken Institute, Citi and Pagaya. The session emphasized the need for new risk rating models for those not currently served by the sector. In this regard, an AI risk decision engine for financial services by Bordo.ai was displayed in the expo hall.

Once you have your customers, you want them to have an amazing experience. To facilitate a unified view of all customer activities on your platform, Mixpanel was one of the vendors on hand demonstrating their capabilities. This product along with the talk on hyper-personalization in the age of AI reminded us of our coverage of the Adobe Summit. If this is a passion area be sure to review this research as well as enjoy its related playlist.

Trust

Expanding on the hyper-personalization to serve customers, a fireside chat featured Fortune reporter Luisa Beltran interviewing PayPal’s Frank Keller. Titled, AI + Trust, the question of when too personalization becomes a creepy user experience was discussed. The one where you have a conversation on the phone then suddenly your computer has an advertisement for such a product. Part of the challenge with the trust question arises because the bad guys are organized, collaborate, and share information but the good guys do not. As discussed in the session “Fighting Fraud in an AI First World’, until the good teams collaborate, the issue will remain. This exciting panel featured leaders from Google, Mostly AI, BNY and Swift. This point was also emphasized in How AI Innovation Influences Trust and Safety panel. This panel featured leaders from JP Morgan, Walmart, Trulioo, and OpenAI. A key takeaway included that AI plus humans is creating new capabilities to try to counterbalance the aggressive progressive of the fraudsters leveraging AI in a coordinated fashion.

Trust is a two-way street. For financial institutions attempting to establish trust with their customers, they may wish to leverage Inscribe.AI. This platform reviews all documents turned in by customers for signs of fraud leveraging generative AI. Maintaining compliance can also assist with maintaining trust. A highly automated intelligent solution for achieving compliance that is traceable, explainable, and auditable by Trisotech was on exhibit. As anyone who has played with early consumer editions of generative AI knows, true value of generative AI is not just the answer but understanding the why behind the generated answer. If, however, your organization is interested in leveraging behavioural AI to prevent fraud, Futurespace may be one of the products for your organization to evaluate.

Nothing loses a customer’s trust like compromising their privacy and their data. Sometimes, no matter the steps taken, a company accidently leaves a backdoor open or misconfigures their environment compromising customer trust. Have no fear, Packetlabs and their white hats are here to offer their services. Remember: it is always better to hire white hats to find your security issues instead of finding out on the front page of the news.

Finally, one of the more critical aspects of trust according to SEC Chair, Glen Gensler is the whistleblower program. This was one of the many topics discussed in this fireside chat.

Identity

We had a flashback to our coverage at Identiverse, as one might expect at any conference in a highly regulated space. The expo hall had some identity solutions on display. A true global identity solution can be difficult to find but Shufti shared their solution. Available across 240 countries validating over 10,000 document types with outcomes in over 150 languages, Shufti is based out of London.

Another identity problem arises in Fintech around the use of credit cards. Is the person using the card really the person we issued the card to? Prove shared their solution that enables you to prove it is really you with only one small line added to the magnetic strip. Prove interestingly leverages the technology within smartphones today to enable the credit card to be a key. With a tap of your credit card to the phone, the phone can let the company know if it is really the card holder holding the official card making the charge.

AI

While very little of the conference did not involve AI, a key concern within Fintech involves using public models with their highly regulated data. Glean shared their product that consumes all your internal data to create a customer LLM for your organization. If your emphasis is one producing customer facing content from your own data, then Writer that leverages generative AI over your own data may be something to explore.

One of the more creative talks on Generative AI was titled, “Killer GENAI Cake”. Emphasizing the parallels to how baking powder created new use cases for baking, GENAI will expedite fintech and related user experiences to the next level. Featuring leaders from Microsoft, iGenius, Growfin and Citizens. Questions addressed by this panel included what use cases could materialize in 2025 and beyond?

Next Year’s Conference

Next year’s Money 20/20 USA will be once again held at the Sands Convention Center on October 26-29, 2025.

^*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking , The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
November 2, 2024