Chris D. Sham on How to Empower Startups with Enterprise-Grade Fraud Tools
For early-stage companies trying to bring a product to market, digital security can feel like a luxury. But Chris D. Sham, COO at faceEsign, argues that putting off proper fraud prevention is a mistake that can come with a steep price.
“Startups too often rely on legacy systems, static KYC tools, or outdated databases,” says Sham. “They think, ‘that’s secure enough,’ but more often than not, they get burned.” His voice, calm and confident, reflects the hard-earned authority of someone who has seen too many companies learn these lessons the hard way.
Sham is no stranger to innovation. At faceEsign, he leads the charge in redefining digital authentication, combining facial recognition, liveness detection, real-time audio and video capture, ID upload, and behavioral analysis into a multilayered biometric system designed to meet the most demanding enterprise security and compliance standards. But his vision goes further: he wants to make those tools accessible to companies just starting out.
Budget Consciousness and the Risk of Complacency
Security is often the first item to fall off a founder’s to-do list, and Sham understands why. “The easy answer is budget,” he says. “Startups are cost-conscious. They want something that works, but they need it to be cheap.” The irony, of course, is that cutting corners on fraud prevention can end up costing far more in the long run.
To address this, Sham helped design a pricing model that scales with the startup’s needs. “We offer a generous amount of usage for free,” he says. “Some founders use it up in a month, others in six. It allows them to integrate real security as they build without financial pressure.”
Critically, Chris Sham emphasizes that this affordability doesn’t come at the expense of quality. “We didn’t cut corners. Early-stage companies get the same high-level tools as enterprise clients, just tailored to scale with their growth.”
Plug-and-Play Protection
Part of what makes faceEsign attractive to developers and product teams is its ease of integration. “We built seamless REST APIs that slot right into existing platforms,” Chris Sham says. “It’s plug-and-play, mobile-first, and optimized even for low-bandwidth environments.”
That mobile compatibility is intentional. As digital ecosystems become more fragmented and consumers increasingly rely on their phones, Sham believes fraud prevention must be both powerful and frictionless. “User experience can’t suffer in the name of security,” he says. “We’ve built systems that work in the background, invisible to the end user but ironclad where it matters.”
AI and the Rise of Invisible Threats
While many founders focus on preventing obvious threats, Sham warns that today’s biggest risks are harder to detect. “Synthetic identity fraud is a major concern. It’s when a bad actor uses AI to compile real data about someone and impersonates them with alarming accuracy.”
He also highlights the growing danger of first-party fraud. “It’s when someone uses their own identity to commit fraud then denies it later. Sometimes it’s even a family member misusing shared personal information.” These aren’t abstract threats; they’re real, growing, and increasingly hard to challenge without solid verification processes.
faceEsign’s solution? Biometric verification, liveness detection, ID upload, and behavioral analysis come together with a patented feature Sham calls “video and audio at the point of consent.” As he explains, “It’s like having a digital notary. Your identity is verified, and your authorization is recorded in real time. That’s ironclad evidence.”
Embedding Security as a Habit
Sham believes that a culture of secure transactions should be foundational for every tech company, not just a late-stage compliance add-on. “From day one, founders should treat digital consent like physical ones,” he says. “When you sign something important in person, you’re physically there. There’s a witness. Why wouldn’t we do the same digitally?”
He sees faceEsign’s biometric tools not just as a product, but as a philosophy of digital integrity. “Every transaction should be traceable, every consent verifiable. Our tools make that possible, even for companies operating on a shoestring.”
Equal Access to Enterprise-Grade Protection
We are delivering enterprise-grade technology just like the kind used by Fortune 500 companies, with even more powerful features combined into one seamless solution. Chris D. Sham’s goal is decentralization and widespread accessibility, no matter the size of the company. “We’re making this available at a startup’s pace and budget,” he says. “No minimums. No compromises. Just the same protection, scaled to where you are now.”
It’s a rare approach in an industry often gated by cost, complexity, or compliance hurdles. By focusing on accessibility and seamless integration, Sham positions faceEsign as a bridge between the startup world and the security standards of enterprise giants. For early-stage companies looking to avoid the pitfalls of weak fraud protection, that bridge might be the smartest investment they make.
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