Quova Launches Next-Generation Suite of Geolocation Solutions

Market-Specific Solutions Created for Fraud Prevention, Regulatory Compliance, Digital Rights Management and Online Marketing

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. – November 29, 2005 – Quova, Inc., the authority on IP Intelligence and leading provider of IP geolocation data and services, today announced the release of its new suite of geolocation solutions for the global Internet enterprise. Quova Secure, Quova Compliance, Quova Media and Quova Marketing have been developed based on five years of success by Quova’s clients and partners in the use of geolocation, and are designed to specifically satisfy the needs and demands of enterprises in the banking, payment processing, e-retail, media, gaming and online marketing industries.

“Over the past five years, our clients’ use of IP Intelligence has evolved from doing simple database lookups to using our data in very sophisticated ways to achieve their business objectives. However, most companies haven’t yet developed the in-house expertise to get as much value as possible from geolocation data,” said Marie Alexander, CEO of Quova. “Because of this, Quova has designed a suite of solutions to guide companies through the process of understanding their online traffic, identifying which geolocation data elements are most meaningful to them, and designing business rules that activate that data within their systems for fraud prevention, regulatory compliance, geo-targeted marketing or digital content distribution. This approach delivers far more value than just plugging in an IP geolocation data feed.”

“Quova’s depth of knowledge about how to use geolocation to drive business value is unmatched,” said Joe Choti, Chief Technology Officer, MLB Advanced Media, the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball. “We were already working with numerous application vendors to determine how to broadcast Major League Baseball games live over the Internet in a way that would protect our local broadcast partners’ rights. Quova helped us truly understand IP intelligence and how it could add value to the systems we had already installed. In the three years we’ve been working with Quova, broadcasting baseball live over the Internet has become the cornerstone of our subscription business.”

Each Quova solution is comprised of data, software and targeted professional services that Quova has integrated to help its clients meet their objectives through the use of IP geolocation information.

• Quova Secure helps e-retailers prevent credit card fraud and enables online financial institutions to prevent account hijacking and other account breaches. Information unique to the Quova Secure data set enables the comparison of an online visitor’s location and Internet connection characteristics with the expected geographic context for that customer. Mismatches can indicate potential fraud. Quova Secure provides the tools for e-retailers who want to deploy a location-aware transaction risk scoring engine and for online banks and credit unions who want to deploy a location-aware authentication solution. IP geolocation is one of the tools recommended in the latest FFIEC guidelines requiring increased security for online banking, and a Quova Secure implementation can help financial institutions meet those federal guidelines.

• Quova Compliance enables enterprises in the online financial services, global e-commerce and other industries to meet governmental jurisdictional restrictions by knowing where their online visitors are. Know Your Customer requirements such as those imposed by The USA PATRIOT Act, the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and other regulatory entities are intended to prevent money laundering and trafficking with banned nations and terrorists. Other laws restrict cross-border pharmaceutical sales and online gambling in certain countries. Assured compliance with these regulations using geolocation protects online enterprises from severe legal consequences and enables them to conduct business with confidence.

• Quova Media is powering a whole new industry by enabling digital content providers to manage where they distribute content online with confidence. Broadcasters can only deliver online content if they can be sure of complying with territorial rights limits by knowing the location of the viewer before they allow access to the content – and by blocking viewers who don’t have the right to see it. The data and software components of the Quova Media solution were bundled specifically to meet this challenge.

• Quova Marketing enables online marketers to serve geographically-targeted advertising and localized content to viewers in specific areas. Ads can be localized to move specific products and drive traffic to particular stores, and web content can be customized to the customer’s language, currency, product and pricing preferences and cultural priorities – enhancing the user experience, building customer loyalty and generating increased revenues.

The foundation of each Quova solution is a market-specific edition of Quova GeoPoint, the world’s most comprehensive repository of IP geolocation data. GeoPoint is now delivered in six tailored editions – Basic, Marketing, Media, Compliance, Anti-Fraud and Secure Editions – that include the data elements necessary to meet market-specific business objectives. For example, the GeoPoint Compliance Edition, part of the Quova Compliance solution, includes the IP geolocation data elements that are critical to helping businesses comply with their specific jurisdictional guidelines.

GeoPoint is delivered to customers through the GeoDirectory Server, a Java application with a high-performance, in-memory database that provides the geographic and network characteristic data associated with every IP address in real-time. With this release, Quova has enhanced the GeoDirectory Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that are used to integrate geolocation information into customer business applications, thus increasing the speed and ease of deploying the GeoDirectory Server and GeoPoint data.

Quova has developed a number of professional service offerings to help companies gain the maximum value from geolocation data. Each Quova solution includes access to one or more of the following Quova services:

• Quova GeoAudit, a series of enterprise analyses ranging from website traffic trends to anonymizing proxy identification, enabling Quova’s clients to better understand their online visitors;
• Quova GeoPredictor Analysis to identify security risks and geolocation-based fraud predictors for the enterprise;
• Quova GeoPolicy for defining and deploying IP geolocation-enabled business rules;
• Quova GeoResearch for in-depth forensic research of specific Internet Protocol addresses or the Internet infrastructure of certain geographies;
• Quova GeoHistory, forensic data reconstruction and retrieval for cyber-criminal investigations; and
• Quova GeoTraining, an introduction to the Internet infrastructure and a comprehensive overview of what can and can’t be done with geolocation.