What Is Know Your Employee (KYE)?

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KYE builds on the same principles as Know Your Customer (KYC), ensuring organizations can verify the identities of their employees at critical access points. Just as KYC helps prevent fraud and strengthens regulatory compliance in financial services, KYE protects businesses from internal fraud and impersonation by bad actors posing as authorized personnel. In other words, it’s a comprehensive KYE framework designed to mitigate risks and ensure that employees accessing sensitive systems are truly who they claim to be.

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Why KYE Matters Now

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When the hacker collective Scattered Spider infiltrated major enterprises, they didn’t rely on complex zero-day exploits or brute-force tools. Instead, they picked up the phone. By impersonating employees and tricking IT help desks into resetting credentials, the group bypassed multi-factor authentication (MFA) and gained direct access to critical systems.

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These incidents highlight a new reality: attackers don’t need to break in—they can simply log in by pretending to be trusted staff. That’s why enterprises are turning to KYE as a proactive defense.

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How CLEAR1 Powers KYE

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CLEAR1 sets the standard for KYE by verifying the person behind every credential, request, and device. With a multi-layered approach to identity and out-of-the-box integrations with leading identity and access management (IAM) platforms like Okta and Ping, CLEAR1 makes it easy to embed identity assurance directly into your workforce identity management ecosystem. By verifying employees at critical touchpoints—from onboarding and authenticator enrollment to account recovery and privileged access—CLEAR1 ensures that only legitimate employees gain access to sensitive systems.

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Why Traditional MFA and Passwords Are No Longer Enough

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For years, businesses have relied on two-factor authentication (2FA) and passwords to secure workforce access. But attackers have learned to sidestep these defenses by exploiting people, not technology. With stolen credentials, deepfake audio, and carefully crafted impersonation attempts, bad actors can slip past device-based authentication and MFA prompts with alarming ease. 

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High-profile breaches show how quickly IT help desks can be manipulated into resetting credentials for someone pretending to be an employee. According to industry research, 68% of breaches in 2024 involved attacks on humans, not technology—with social engineering, callback phishing, and credential abuse now accounting for the majority of cloud incidents. As highlighted in a New York Times report, small businesses and enterprises alike face growing potential risks as attackers increasingly exploit the human element rather than technical flaws.

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Organizations can no longer assume that a password, a device, or even a standard MFA prompt is enough to prove identity.

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CLEAR1’s Multi-Layered Identity Approach

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That’s where CLEAR1 comes in. CLEAR1 verifies the person behind every login, recovery request, or privileged action. CLEAR1 takes KYE from a compliance checkbox to a strategic advantage. Its layered verification approach includes:

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• Biometric verification – Confirms a live, present person is behind each request, and that this person matches the portrait on the government issued ID
• Document verification – Validates government-issued IDs to prevent forged credentials
• Source corroboration – Cross-checks identity details (i.e., address, DOB, etc.) against authoritative databases
• Device security – Detects anomalies and compromised devices

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Best of all, CLEAR1 establishes a reusable identity. After a one-time setup, employees can instantly re-verify with just a selfie—whether resetting a password, recovering an account, or enrolling in MFA.

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While the experience is fast and seamless for employees, CLEAR1 still runs extensive checks in the background: confirming that the selfie matches the ID on file, ensuring the device is secure, and validating data against authoritative and issuing sources. The process is seamless for users—but rigorous behind the scenes, ensuring that only legitimate employees gain access.

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CLEAR1 in Action: Combating Social Engineering

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Organizations like T-Mobile and Tampa General Hospital (TGH) have already implemented CLEAR1 to protect against impersonation-based attacks.

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T-Mobile integrated CLEAR1 into its employee identity verification and onboarding process, strengthening trust across its systems. As Mark Clancy, SVP of Cybersecurity at T-Mobile, noted: “CLEAR1 gives us a strong, identity-first approach that helps us build trust across our systems by verifying the person—not just their credentials.”

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Tampa General Hospital deployed CLEAR1 to secure employee account recovery. By replacing knowledge-based authentication with biometric MFA, TGH reduced account reset times from 4.5 days to 20 minutes, while mitigating potential for human error in help desk interactions. 

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These case studies show how CLEAR1 transforms KYE into a proactive defense against insider risk, fraud, and regulatory exposure –– while also having a positive impact on operations. 

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Why Businesses Need KYE Now

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• Prevent Fraud: Block imposters before they infiltrate your systems.
• Ensure Regulatory Compliance: Meet requirements across finance, healthcare, and government.
• Mitigate Risks: Reduce exposure to internal fraud and AI-driven impersonation.
• Protect Brand Trust: Safeguard employees, customers, and data.

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KYE, powered by CLEAR1, ensures you know exactly who’s on the other side of the screen. To protect your business with identity-first security, explore how to integrate a workforce identity verification solution into your ecosystem today.