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Protecting against bot attacks, fraud, and account takeover attempts are a challenge for organizations of all sizes. Industries like ecommerce, online retail, and B2C consumer tech especially struggle with ensuring security while continuing to grow users and boost conversions.
Bots accounted for around half of all Internet traffic in 2022 according to Imperva, and it’s likely that number has only grown since. Account takeover incidents continue to rise and pose serious risks to businesses—according to a 2024 report by Abnormal Security, 83% of organizations experienced at least one account takeover in the past year.
Descope’s integration with Forter empowers organizations to enhance their authentication and user journey flows with advanced AI / ML-driven risk assessments. This connector enables businesses to detect and block fraudulent signups, logins, and bots while ensuring a seamless experience for legitimate users. Additionally, it helps prevent account takeover attempts through adaptive MFA and leverages shared risk signals from a global dataset of over 1.8 billion identities.
About Forter
Forter is the Trust Platform for digital commerce, driven by its Identity Graph — the world’s largest first-party dataset of 1.8 billion online identities. This global network delivers shared insights and collective fraud protection, empowering businesses to stay ahead of evolving fraud trends.
With dynamic AI/ML models that adapt to the latest fraud patterns, Forter applies identity intelligence across the entire digital commerce journey—from sign-up and login to checkouts. It optimizes payments to maximize conversions and protects against abuse and chargebacks. By blocking bad actors and filtering out fraud, Forter allows businesses to focus on enhancing customer lifetime value.
Forter helps the world’s leading brands reduce chargeback rates and false declines by 90%, while cutting the need for MFA by 98%. This drives business growth, boosts user satisfaction, and strengthens security against advanced threats.
Connector overview
The Descope connector with Forter enables organizations to:
Use Forter risk decisions (Approve / Decline / Verification Required) to create tailored signup and login paths in Descope.
Improve risk visibility with decline reasons from Forter (e.g. linked to blocked accounts, account takeover attempt) to enforce specific mitigations and show custom end user messages in Descope.
Easily enforce Forter recommendations (when to perform MFA, which MFA method to use, etc.) in Descope user journey flows.
Create branching user journey paths in Descope Flows based on risk recommendations from Forter.
Simplify the integration of Forter into websites without needing to sync device codes with the app backend.
Orchestrate user journeys in a no / low code workflow that combines Forter risk scores alongside data from other risk identification tools such as Telesign, AbuseIPDB, and reCAPTCHA Enterprise.
Organizations can easily get started with the Descope Forter connection by using one of our two Flow templates: one to use Forter risk recommendations to stop fraudulent signups and the other to use Forter risk recommendations during step-up authentication after the user has already logged in.
Use case: Stop fraudulent signups
Cybercriminals continue to target signup pages with spam, bot attacks, credential stuffing, and other fraud tactics—damaging user experience and hurting the bottom line. By using Forter risk scores in signup flows, the Descope Forter connector helps organizations identify users before they even register. This ensures that only legitimate users can create accounts or access promotions, preventing fake signups that can distort analytics or enable malicious activity, while providing real users with a seamless onboarding experience.
The Flow screenshot below shows how the `Forter - Sign Up Check` action is used to enrich the Descope user journey with a real-time risk score from Forter. A conditional step then creates two branching paths based on the risk score. with the “High” and “Low” branches being determined by each organization’s risk appetite.
In the Flow shown in this example, high-risk users are asked for an extra authentication factor by having an OTP sent to their email, while low-risk users are signed up directly with no extra steps. This enables organizations to personalize the onboarding experience based on the risk profile of the user.
Use case: Risk-based MFA for returning users
Implementing MFA isn’t enough if it adds friction for all users, especially legitimate return website visitors. A static approach that enforces MFA for every login attempt will lead to dropoffs and lost business. Using the Descope Forter connector, organizations can implement a more nuanced MFA approach that tailors the login path based on the risk profile of the user.
The Flow screenshot below shows how the `Forter / Login Check` step can be used to provide real-time risk information for login attempts to initiate adaptive MFA flows. The Flow below logs the user in without any MFA if Forter deems them a low-risk user and enforces an SMS OTP MFA if Forter deems them a high-risk user.
Organizations seeking a more composite risk score that takes into account specific risk scenarios can also accomplish this by combining Forter risk scores with native risk signals with Descope. For example, the conditional step below can be used to enforce MFA if:
The Forter login risk decision equals
VERIFICATION_REQUIRED, orThe user is logging in from a new (untrusted) device, or
The user is exhibiting behavior consistent with impossible traveler i.e. logging in from two distant and different locations in an artificially short period of time
Conclusion
This connector combines AI / ML powered identity intelligence from Forter with the drag & drop user journeys of Descope to help organizations prevent account takeover and fraud without impacting user experience. The connector also enables rapid integration, helping joint customers easily implement Forter risk recommendations in their user journey.
Interested to learn more about the connector? If you haven’t yet started your Descope journey, sign up for a Free Forever account and set up your own Forter connector. To explore other connectors, visit our integrations page.
