Bitcoin HYPR Announces $3M Funding Round for Biometric Security Products
Ryan Strauss | Oct 26, 2016 | 08:45
HYPR, an encryption-specific solution to enable secure biometric login authentication, announced on Tuesday that it has secured $3 million USD in funding from RTP Ventures, Boldstart Ventures and Mesh Ventures.
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This announcement, coupled with an ever-increasing roster of multi-national customers in the banking industry and beyond, underscores the fact that biometric authentication is a key realm for advancement in login security, person-ability, and user control in securing biometric data.
Speaking to the excitement of the partnership, Ed Sim, managing partner and founder at Boldstart Ventures, said that “There is no bigger opportunity in security right now than to replace every password with biometrics.
HYPR said its platform approach is the best way to make that happen, as it allows financial, IoT and enterprise customers to easily integrate into existing architectures, deploy any biometric to its customer base and scale infinitely.
HYPR Says Major Businesses Are Interested in Biometric Security
George Avetisov
HYPR’s announcement signals an increased imperative to implement biometric authentication solutions within Fortune 500 enterprises.
In order to scale biometric authentication across millions of users, HYPR provides a multi-faceted tool to secure biometric data secured using a hashing algorithm that stores a hash of one’s biometric data locally on a user’s device, rather than a fingerprint or eye scan itself.
According to HYPR CEO George Avetisov, the initiative started with the core question of whether or not biometric authentication could live under a decentralized model.
To actualize this vision, HYPR created a secure, password-less experience through allowing users and customers to choose a combination of biometric data to be required at login, ranging from fingerprint, to voice, face and eye recognition. This new type of data architecture for biometric authentication aims to advance management of biometric information while implementing a secure, user-controlled login.
Particularly given the globally heightened risk from data breaches across industries, institutional players are growing interested in ensuring one-to-one, biometric-based logins. HYPR continues to run towards its mission by using new funds for rapid expansion of its security and engineering talent base.
In the face of hacking, requiring a biometric layer leverages cryptography to hedge logins against purely digital authenticators to physical-digital ones. As a result, a particular human needs to enter their own biometric information, in turn reducing risk for authentication-targeted hacks.
In the future, it is even possible that cryptographically-secured biometric information will be used in internet of things (IoT) applications, such as authentication for opening a car door or hotel room.
As smart contracts turn from theory to reality, look for unique biometric triggers to set off a multitude of functions by autonomous players. For now, with early adopters of bank to bank interaction, commercial banking login, and health industry players, HYPR has demonstrated that a demand exists for distributed biometric authentication technology.
What do you think of the HYPR fundraising round? What does the future hold in store for biometric authentication? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Bitcoinist.
