Keyless secures $2.2 Million Round, Ripple among one of the investors

• Keyless will launch a product that unlocks access to users’ private keys with encrypted biometric data.
• The company is the first to integrate biometrics with secure multi-party computation.

Keyless, a London-based cybersecurity startup, has recently gathered $2.2 million in a funding round. The firm managed to attract investors like Ripple’s Xpring, Cryptos Capital, Blockchain Valley Ventures and LuneX. Keyless is the first to integrate biometrics with secure multi-party computation. Paolo Gasti, co-founder and chief technology officer, said:

We don’t want the network to spy on user biometrics. This way the authentication happens right there and wasn’t just a session replay of a previous authentication.

Gasti stated that the cybersecurity firm wrapped up its beta testing and integrations with two crypto wallet customers for its first product, the Keyless Authenticator. The authentication technology will reportedly protect personal data across cloud, mobile and internet-of-things technologies. Gasti further said that Keyless is currently working on the integration of two other firms. It aims at launching Keyless Authenticator to the public by the end of the year.  

Xpring Senior VP Ethan Beard revealed that the reason Ripple’s Xpring invested in Keyless because of its potential for adoption in multiple industries, especially crypto. He told Coindesk in an e-mail:

During our technical review, we found Keyless’ solution to be clever and well thought out. We believe Keyless’ solution will be particularly welcomed by wallet providers and exchanges to accelerate the verification process for crypto holders.

Keyless use secure multi-party computation which enables the user to split up encrypted parts of biometric information like their face, voice or fingerprint. It also splits up encrypted parts of a machine-learning algorithm that identifies that information and sends the encrypted details to multiple nodes. The nodes are operated by the user and companies on the Keyless network.

Though the technology is still in its testing stage, Gasti expects each user to have five nodes associated with their account. Three out of those five nodes would have to come in accord before the biometric information is decrypted. Keyless is touting the speed of authentication of the product. Although this process was carried out by scientists in 20 to 30 seconds in the past, Gasti claims that Keyless has gotten the computation down to under 100 milliseconds. Gasti added:  

We’ve known since the 1980s that this was possible … and we’ve been working on this for ten years. The product allows low-latency execution without having any effect on security.

 

---