Fraud, Trust, and the Future of Research: CMB’s Strategy to Protect Data Integrity

Data integrity is foundational to what we do at CMB: Our clients rely on us for insights that guide high-stakes decisions and that means the data we use to inform our work must be trustworthy, transparent, and rigorously vetted. In April, CMB and more than 60 other companies were named victims in an indictment of OP4G and Slice, who were accused of coordinating in fraudulent data gathering practices. The allegations were deeply troubling – not only to us, but to the broader research community – and we acted immediately to assess the situation and protect our clients.

While our comprehensive internal review confirmed only a very small portion of our total sample had been potentially impacted, we take any compromise to data integrity seriously. We prioritized outreach to every potentially impacted client, offering specific recommendations aligned with the details of their engagement.

Fortunately, we were well prepared. CMB has been heavily involved in industry efforts to provide data quality and protect against fraud. Every project follows stringent fraud detection protocols, which include proprietary techniques, third-party tools and manual reviews. These detection layers successfully helped us flag and remove a significant amount of potentially fraudulent sample data in real time.

Yet we must do more. We recognize that the threats we face are evolving and that continuous vigilance is required to ensure data integrity. We’re focused on what’s next – not just what’s happened in this instance. Here are the additional steps we’re taking now to go even further:

1. Additional Safeguards for Vendor Qualification: Effective immediately, we will implement additional rigorous vendor qualification processes, including stricter requirements using the ESOMAR-37, a framework for ensuring transparency, quality, and accountability in the online sampling process. All existing vendors will be monitored on a data quality scorecard and recertified annually.
2. Enhanced Sample Verification: In addition to CMB’s current rigorous AI+HI™ (artificial plus human intelligence) data integrity processes, we are building new premium sample tiers that offer stricter qualification criteria on CMB’s multi-factor scoring parameters (pre-survey, in-survey and post-survey). We are also working with partners to explore new verification methods, including biometric identification through facial or voice recognition.

3. Next-Gen Fraud Detection: CMB is committed to independent verification of sample quality. We are participating in the Data Quality Benchmarking Initiative to benchmark where the industry stands today, and we will invest in research to identify novel analytical approaches for weeding out more fraudulent responses, both human and AI-generated.

As we move forward, we remain deeply committed to doing more to prevent fraudulent behavior, and to supporting our clients, our partners, and the industry we help shape.

CMB recently signed the Data Quality Excellence Pledge, a commitment signed by over 150 organizations to uphold high standards, improve transparency and support education across the industry.

We also sit on the Insights Association’s Council for Data Integrity, which helps with the continual evolution of sample and data integrity definitions, quality measures and evaluation processes, while providing direct access to potential solutions for mitigating fraud.

This incident has reinforced for all of us at CMB the importance of staying vigilant and continually refining our practices to uphold data integrity. It’s a responsibility we take seriously and a commitment we live every day.