David Jones founded his fraud detection security company ThreatMETRIX in 2005 with an eye to the international security market - recent events have shown him clearly where the future lies.

In 2007, he says, of the $US250 billion ($A260 billion) in credit card transactions lodged in the US in which no credit card was presented (that is, in phone or online transactions) $US5 billion was lost - a fraud rate of around 2% of total transactions.

Last year the company struck a deal with the US-based payment processor Entrust to have its software incorporated in that company's systems, which led to an Australian capital raising from Technology Venture Partners and CM Capital. The $5.5 million raised was used to open an office in Palo Alto, California.

Business development director Alisdair Faulkner moved there in April to drive growth and recruit staff.

Mr Jones says: "The revenue streams for us prospering are going to come from the US, they're not going to come from Australia.

"We believed when we commenced that we could build significant revenues in Australia, but the truth has been that the amount of fraud that's in the US is driving the need for our product."