The Israeli Startups: The Future Of Authentication Systems

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Most current password security systems for the Internet are flawed. And it goes beyond the systems themselves: Passwords really are just an awful way of keeping things secure.  We usually set them too short, too simple, write them on pieces of paper hidden under keyboards and just generally make them easy to find, guess, or crack.

On top of that, legacy passwords and tokens do not truly authenticate individuals. They can be transferred or copied easily, a user is asked to have a different password for each account, often causing them to forget their password to begin with, and each password has to be strong and needs to be replaced every few months, which is bothersome.

Some have tried to tackle this problem using biometric systems, such as fingerprint recognition. You couldn’t forget your fingerprint, right?

Well, yes. But that might also be the downside of this technology. Fingerprints can be forged but not replaced. That means that once someone has forged your fingerprint, there isn’t much you can do. It also means that there is no way to recover from identity theft.

The solution, then, might be not in what you know or what you have, but in who you are.

An Israeli company called Verifyoo came up with a more secure authentication method, using physiological, behavioral and mental characteristics along with human memory.

The system uses characteristics that cannot be transferred between individuals and are hard to imitate, thus significantly lowering the risk of identity theft. Furthermore, the technology has a built in account recovery mechanism, which is one of the weakest links in current methods.

The system uses a machine learning algorithm which builds a personal user profile using a set of unique parameters – who you are.

These parameters are used in each login to safely and reliably authenticate users.

The technology perfectly fits multiple use cases such as user login, account recovery, authorization of large financial transactions and more. In addition, it does not require special equipment and supports standard smartphones, tablets and wearable devices.

Verifyoo is a Technion spinoff company which was founded in 2015. The company will showcase its technology at the Pioneers Startup Competition hosted by CBS Startup Festival on March 17th in Yad Harutzim 11, Tel Aviv.

For more details and registration, click here.