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Compare SEON vs SAS

Both SEON and SAS offer established systems to prevent fraud and obtain relevant data to ensure your business’s online security needs are met.

However, it is important to understand that each company has its pros and cons. Let’s take a look at how SEON and SAS compare to one another.

Disclaimer: Everything you’ll read in this article was gleaned from online research, including user reviews. We did not have time to manually test every tool. This article was last updated in Q1 2023. Please feel free to contact us to request an update/correction.

About SAS

Founded in 1984 off of a North Carolina State University analytics project, SAS – which stands for Statistical Analysis System – has grown to be the largest privately-owned software company in the world.

SAS’s fraud prevention software is based on the massive data analytics capabilities that the company has been snowballing throughout its decades-long history. These data products are used by the majority of Fortune 500 companies and are supported by some 12,000 employees worldwide.

SAS focuses on creating scalable data solutions that manage enterprise datasets, develop models that can be applied usefully, and then derive insights from those models. While that solution, SAS Viya, is agnostic in terms of functionality and can potentially have applications beyond fraud prevention and risk management, SAS has a strong focus on providing enterprise-level security solutions. Indeed, in June 2022, SAS acquired the Kamakura Corporation, which specializes in risk management for the banking and finance sectors.

Let’s see how SAS’s fraud prevention and recently-bolstered risk management portfolio stacks up against SEON’s.

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Key SAS Products

SAS focuses on enterprise clients on a contract-based subscription basis, providing access to a great number of modular solutions. Many of them are geared towards corporate functionality like analytics, cloud and data management, IoT, and marketing segmentation.

The main product offering is an all-inclusive data analytics platform, SAS Viya. In terms of fraud prevention, SAS divides its focus into payment fraud and identity fraud. Within these areas, SAS recommends certain modules, some of which may have multiple applications for its customers. The recommended modules that address payment and ID fraud include:

  • SAS Continuous Monitoring for Procurement Integrity, for internal and partner monitoring, with centralized management and investigation tools
  • SAS Detection and Investigation, for fraud detection within the customer base, alert management, rule management, and case management
  • SAS Identity 360, leveraging social media analysis, device fingerprinting, biometric and behavioral data
  • SAS Fraud Management, organizing and centralizing the above

These solutions all make use of the extensive data and monitoring capabilities that SAS has folded into its services over the years. This gives the software a huge scope, and it can be utilized by many arms of a given organization. There is a focus on optimizing centralized decision-making in the software, which has executive capabilities that allow top-down visualization and control.

SAS boasts robust scaling functionality, which is clear in its range of products. Utilizing the platform to its maximum functionality requires multiple dedicated teams outside of fraud and risk, with comparable software suites optimized for DataOps, security, marketing, cloud computing, and more – there are even modules for livestock monitoring and flood warnings.

Let’s see what advantages and disadvantages this scaled approach offers against the fraud-fighting capabilities of SEON.

Pros of SAS
  • Comprehensive solutions: Regardless of vertical, there are applications within SAS’s stack that can be applied to any enterprise-level company, with a global support and data network and a legacy of data industry leadership.
  • Scalable: SAS is present in the majority of Fortune 500 companies. With executive-specific, top-down modules, it is designed for ambitious companies who are looking to grow – with solutions that grow with them.
  • Highly specified modules: SAS has developed or acquired technology to address what is seemingly every corporate pain point, no matter how granular the issue, or what vertical it is specific to. SAS also offers specific applications for the education sector, having a background in education itself.
Cons of SAS
  • Requires extensive human resources: The number of applications that SAS offers means that multiple teams should be using it at any given time. Despite a focus on automated decision-making and autonomous uptime, the platform emphasizes managerial software to efficiently control all of the applications. Because not every company has these resources in place, SAS may not always be cost-efficient.
  • Potentially slow: Due to the size and complexity both in terms of modules and coordinated management, you may find SAS to be occasionally unwieldy. As the software synchronizes decision-making and data across all modules, response times can vary, according to reviews.
  • Less approachable UX: Compared to other offerings on the market, the interface is less design and workflow-oriented. Though SAS offers visualized data and insight graphs, the display is generally text-focused.

SEON vs SAS Features Comparison Table

SEON SAS
Data aggregation
IP analysisYesYes
Email data enrichment YesYes
Phone data enrichmentYesYes
Find user social mediaYes, 50+ platformsYes
Device fingerprintingYesYes
Transaction BINYesYes
Behavior trackingYesYes
User authenticationYes, via hashesNo
Risk analysis
Custom rulesYesYes
Machine learning suggestionsYesYes
Industry preset rulesYesYes
Risk scoreYesYes
Integration/deployment
API callsYesYes
Modular APIsYesYes
Custom API fieldsYesYes
GUIYesYes
Chrome extensionYes No
Manual queriesYesYes
Graph visualizationNoYes
ReportingYesYes
Team managementYesYes
Integration with other toolsYesYes
Pricing
Chargeback guaranteeNoNo
Free integrationYes
Free supportYes
Free trialYesYes, on request
Cost per monthFree, with paid options at scale starting at $299 per month.Not available to the public
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Where SEON Wins Over SAS

  • Compared to the potentially overwhelming scope of the SAS suite, SEON’s relatively lightweight option guarantees fast performance, even for businesses scaled for transactions in the thousands. As SEON also focuses on fraud and data specifically, a much smaller team can use the risk management platform to its fullest extent, relying on SEON’s automated processes and active support to streamline workflows.
  • SEON is free for up to 2,000 API calls per month, and it has priced options for workloads beyond that, as well as faster processing. SAS is an enterprise-focused model that creates bespoke subscription contracts for its clients. Given that the SAS product can and should be used by multiple teams to get the most out of it, SEON may prove a more practical option for a range of businesses, regardless of their size.

Where SAS Wins Over SEON

  • SAS offers an all-in-one data analytics solution, with capabilities to design data optimizations, then implement them and give control to those who need it. It goes beyond fraud-fighting, as optimizations can be applied to any data stream available, via the flagship SAS Viya product. Enterprise-level solutions that want complete data coverage would do well with SAS.
  • As a long-standing fraud prevention and data analytics company, SAS offers a certain amount of security purely through brand recognition. As such, it also has a huge support network and access to a massive database of partner information. This database is used to inform its analytics processes, streamlining data insights right out of the box.

Choose SEON if
  • You need a scalable, cost-efficient solution for your business that is small, medium, or preparing to grow.
  • Your risk team wants real-time fraud-fighting data or AML data that never goes stale, as is the case with risk insights derived from pools of existing data. SEON’s insights are gathered in real-time.
  • Your business prioritizes speed for its transaction monitoring, minimizing customer friction. SEON’s API calls happen within seconds, even with batch lookups.
Choose SAS if
  • Your company is enterprise level and wants a comprehensive data analytics solution that extends well beyond just fraud prevention and risk management – and one that can also be used to coordinate data usage across multiple channels.
  • Your company has specific monitoring needs for compliance, particularly in sectors like education, farming, law enforcement, and the IoT.
  • You are looking to unify data across all business channels so that data configured by one arm can be updated across the entire company in real time.

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SEON Team


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