The Belgian residents who were linked to the November terrorist attack could have been stopped with real-time sophisticated analytics that can detect behavioral changes in credit and debit card usage, said Dr. Akli Adjaoute, founder and CEO of Brighterion, a company specializing in credit card fraud prevention. The system would probably have caught the attacker, he said, even if the various government intelligence services weren’t involved. “The guy from Belgium was blacklisted. He rented a car using his own card and passport, crossed the border, filled up with gas and created a digital footprint.” You can’t rent a car without a credit card because the card covers insurance. Most airline tickets are also purchased with plastic — a Belgian trying to buy a ticket to Turkey with cash would immediately arouse suspicions. The artificial intelligence that Brighterion uses to prevent fraud in credit cards — MasterCard is a client — could detect the sort of change in behavior leading up to an attack. “You can analyze in real time who is entering Europe, who is traveling or traveled last week, how many, and who is going in and out, said Adjaoute. “Can you believe that France and Belgium found he went to Syria and came back? If they had shared the information, they would have some indication of how to find the man. They were lucky one of them threw his phone on a garbage dump in St. Denis and they were able to locate them.” Good thing because they were going to attack the Paris business district of La Defense and planned another attack on Charles DeGaulle Airport, said Adjaoute. “The phone allowed the police to do a digital footprint.” What Brighterion brings to the market is the same technology it uses for anti-money laundering. “We know in UK [where it monitors more than 60 percent of business] how a business is operating, whom they are they wiring money to. We have a 360-degree view of the relationships, so we will be able to spot if something is abnormal,” he explained.