Hyderabad firm's AI, blockchain platform promises to end menace of phishing messages

Tanla Platforms: Tanla Platforms to launch Wisely ATP, an anti-phishing technology platform, at MWC in Barcelona on February 27. The company will launch Wisely ATP at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain on February 27, 2023. Wisely ATP is a global anti-phishing platform to protect citizens, trusted brands and digital economy.

Hyderabad-headquartered cloud communications company Tanla Platforms has come up with an end-to-end phishing protection platform called Wisely ATP that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent spam messages from reaching a phone.

The messages it will ward off are the kind we get almost every day—promising a job by clicking on a link or a warning that our bank account will be suspended if we don't update your KYC.

These messages are used by scamsters to steal money and personal information. These online scams amount to a loss of nearly $55 billion globally, Global Anti Scam Alliance has said.

Tanla Platforms while blocking these also bring them to the notice of Google, WhatsApp and law enforcement agencies by giving them real-time alerts on the spam messages getting blocked by the platform.

The company has leveraged a blockchain platform to create an audit trail of these messages and sends them to authorities, so that, if necessary, they can even be used as evidence in a court of law.

Last week in a live demonstration of Wisely ATP to select mediapersons, Tanla showed that the platform uses three AI engines to block spam messages.

The first algorithm, reputation engine, detects the trustworthiness of the number that is sending the messages. The semantic engine verifies the language of the message and lastly, the evaluation engine decides whether the message should be allowed or blocked.

But how accurate is it? Is there a chance of legitimate messages getting blocked?

Tanla's chief executive officer Uday Reddy claimed that Wisely ATP processes over 1 trillion transactions annually in real-time with an accuracy of over 99 percent.

The company also said it recently conducted a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)-mandated regulatory sandbox to validate the workings of Wisely.

“TRAI was the first regulator to introduce blockchain-based DLT solution to curb the menace of spam. Tanla has been a key player in providing the solution,” said TRAI chairman PD Vaghela has said.

During the demonstration at Tanla's headquarters, Reddy said the platform can be deployed at the network level, banks can also be its customers, it can also be used with caller-ID applications such as Truecaller and so on.

Ravi Santhanam, Chief Marketing Officer at HDFC Bank, said, “At HDFC Bank, we obsess over customer safety and security. With the rising threat of phishing in India, the bank has been raising customer awareness through two large public campaigns. Taking another step in this direction, we are delighted to partner with Tanla to curb phishing at the source and offer end-to-end protection to our customers."