HYPR, the startup that developed cybersecurity technology to protect biometric data, announced Tuesday (Oct. 25) it raised $3 million in financing from RTP, Boldstart and Mesh Ventures to accelerate enterprise deployment of its biometric authentication suite.
On the company’s website, HYPR said: “It’s been a great journey of innovation and growth in building HYPR with our partners across the Fortune 500. With some of the industry’s best enterprise software-focused venture funds, this financing round will fuel our abilities to better support our large enterprise customers. We’re aggressively expanding our roster of world-class engineers hard at work at our flagship headquarters in the Herald Square area of Manhattan.”
In an interview with TechCrunch, HYPR Chief Executive George Avetisov said what the company does is decentralize and encrypt biometric data, making it difficult for hackers to get their hands on it and requiring them to go after targets individually instead of accessing a ton of data on one corporate system. With HYPR, a user’s fingerprint, facial traits or other biometric data is temporarily stored on their mobile device. HYPR encrypts this data so it stays on the device. According to the TechCrunch report, if a bank makes customers scan their iris before they can make any transfer over a certain amount, HYPR sends the bank a token confirming the user’s identity for just that instance. The bank doesn’t need an actual scan of the customer’s eye.
“It’s not a good user experience to have to log into your toaster with a password. And you don’t want to unlock your home or car door with a PIN that someone could hack and steal,” said the CEO in the report. “As more and more IoT devices become part of our lives, we will work with manufacturers to make them all as safe as a bank’s mobile app.”
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