Ohio wins national cybersecurity award for fraud solutions

OHIO — The National Association of State Chief Information Officers awarded Ohio for taking action to stop fraud.

Ohio was awarded the State IT Recognition Award for its unique approach to proactively detecting suspicious activity in state systems.

“It is crucial that we protect state systems and taxpayers from fraud while also ensuring Ohioans are getting uninterrupted access to the services they need,” said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. “Ohio takes cybersecurity seriously. Our state is on guard against fraud and works to continually adjust our tactics as cyber criminals adjust theirs.”

The InnovateOhio team began developing the fraud detection solution in 2023 when the state noticed suspicious behavior within the system.

The machine learning model identifies fraud patterns and produces a risk level for suspicious accounts, which determines whether an account will be deactivated.

“We challenged ourselves through a ‘do-no-harm’ approach to balance access and security: we must keep our defenses strong while continuing to serve the needs of Ohioans,” said Department of Administrative Services Director Kathleen C. Madden. “This combination of machine learning and human oversight is what makes the FDR solution a truly unique cybersecurity tool.”

From Sept. 2024 through April 2025, the risk engine reviewed nearly 3 million unique users and disabled just over 186,000 of them. The oversight team reviewed 16,000 accounts and made changes to better train the tool.