Shauli Zacks
Published on: September 25, 2025
SafetyDetectives recently interviewed Joanna Fong, Chief Risk Officer at SHIELD. With more than eight years at the company, Joanna has played a key role in shaping fraud risk strategies and guiding organizations through an increasingly complex digital landscape. In our conversation, she shared insights on SHIELD’s device-first approach to fraud prevention, the challenges posed by fake accounts, and how the company is working to build a safer and more trusted digital world.
Can you share a bit about your background and your current role at SHIELD
I’ve been with SHIELD for over eight years, and in that time, I’ve seen the fraud landscape change dramatically. I’ve spent my career shaping fraud risk strategies and guiding organizations in staying ahead of increasingly sophisticated threats, and what drew me to SHIELD was its mission to eliminate unfairness and enable trust on a global scale.
As Chief Risk Officer, I oversee our risk strategy and innovation initiatives. That means working closely with product teams to make sure we stay ahead of fraud tactics, partnering with our clients to help them build sustainable defenses against emerging threats, and working closely with our CEO and founder, Justin, to ensure his vision remains at the heart of everything we do.
What excites me about my role at SHIELD is that we are trying to make the digital world safer and better for everyone. I’ve been fortunate enough to help drive SHIELD’s efforts to protect global organizations across various industries, enabling them to fight fraud, foster trust, and grow with confidence. Our actionable fraud intelligence is proving to be a boon for businesses in stopping threats like account takeovers, promo abuse, and collusion before they cause harm. And seeing the real impact we’re making—helping global companies operate safely and with confidence—is what motivates me the most.
How does SHIELD’s device-first approach to fraud prevention differ from more traditional solutions?
Our approach starts with the device, because every fraud attempt begins with one. Whether it’s an account takeover, identity fraud, or payment fraud, it all starts with a device.
Fraudsters today can spoof thousands of devices to appear like genuine users, and with AI, they can scale this faster than ever. Traditional solutions often struggle to keep up with this kind of volume and sophistication.
With our device-first approach, we act as the first line of defense. SHIELD’s Device ID identifies every unique device on a platform, something that other solutions in the market struggle to do. It remains persistent even when fraudsters attempt to disguise or reset their devices. And we go beyond flagging by providing actionable fraud intelligence that enables businesses to take decisive action.
This is how our device-first approach to fraud prevention differs from more traditional solutions: instead of fighting fraud reactively, our customers take control, staying one step ahead of fraud instead of constantly chasing it.
What are the biggest fraud challenges you see today across industries like fintech, e-commerce, and gaming?
One of the biggest challenges we see across industries is the rise of fake accounts. They may seem harmless at first, but in reality, they serve as the foundation for some of the largest fraud syndicates in the world.
Fake accounts are the gateway to a wide range of fraudulent activities. They enable account takeovers, illegitimate transfers, bonus and promo abuse, and they can be used to inflate or degrade reviews. In gaming, they can be used to cheat and gain unfair advantages in money-driven competitions.
The scale of the problem is what makes it so serious. Fake accounts are cheap to create, easy to automate, and extremely difficult for traditional defenses to detect. If businesses don’t address them at the root, every other type of fraud becomes harder to manage.
Over the years, we’ve seen this happen repeatedly, and we’ve developed our technology to address it at the root. With the SHIELD Device ID, we can detect when multiple accounts are linked to the same device, something fraudsters rely on to operate at scale. That gives businesses a clear signal to act before fake accounts grow into widespread abuse.
Many platforms struggle to balance user privacy with effective fraud detection—how does SHIELD address that challenge?
This is a critical question because many solutions today take the easy route by relying on personally identifiable information (PII), like location access, behavioral tracking, or even sensitive user data. Not only does that approach raise compliance risks, it’s also intrusive and, frankly, unethical, putting unnecessary friction on genuine users.
At SHIELD, we deliberately took a different path. Unlike other vendors in the market, our solution doesn’t require PII, but works on device intelligence. Instead of collecting personal data, we examine device risk indicators that reveal the technologies fraudsters use, such as app cloners, GPS spoofers, emulators, and VPNs.
The result is that businesses get a clear view of fraud risk, without compromising user privacy. And because our technology works seamlessly behind the scenes, users aren’t interrupted with captchas or repeated verification checks. It’s a safer, more respectful, and more effective way to fight fraud.
Fraud tactics are constantly evolving. How does SHIELD stay ahead of new threats and techniques?
Fraud is borderless, and so is SHIELD. We work across mobility, fintech, e-commerce, and more, in every major region of the world. That global footprint, combined with our AI engines, gives us the most diverse visibility into emerging threats across every industry. When a new fraud pattern emerges in one market, our AI models identify it, and we update our solutions across industries and regions. This ensures businesses using SHIELD are prepared for threats that haven’t yet surfaced in their market but could impact them in the future.
Every year, we screen more than 1.5 billion devices and over 5 billion activities, covering 231 countries and territories. All of that data feeds into our AI-powered Global Intelligence Network—a continuously updating library of fraud patterns, malicious tools, and attack techniques.
And just as importantly, these insights are used to train our AI models. That means SHIELD is constantly learning. Our models adapt in real time to detect new and evolving attack methods, giving businesses protection that improves with every single interaction.
That’s how we help our customers stay ahead of threats instead of being blindsided by them.
Looking forward, what role do you see SHIELD playing in shaping the future of digital trust and online safety?
Our mission at SHIELD is ambitious but straightforward: eliminating unfairness to enable trust for the world. And that mission is only becoming more important now than ever.
With the rise of generative AI, deepfakes, and other emerging technologies, businesses are facing a whole new level of threats. Fraud today undermines confidence, safety, and even the sense of fairness in the digital world. Many businesses feel more vulnerable now than they ever have before.
At SHIELD, our role is to give businesses the confidence to face these challenges head-on. To provide them with the tools to fight back, and to create environments where trust and fairness can thrive.
Looking ahead, we don’t just see SHIELD as a fraud prevention solution. We see it as a foundation for digital trust. Because ultimately, a trusted digital world is one where businesses can grow freely, and users can participate without fear. That’s the future we’re committed to building.
