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Hoyos Labs, a digital infrastructure security company, used Mobile World Congress (MWC) convention in Barcelona, Spain, to present HoyosID, a mobile app that allows consumers to use biometrics to securely and replace the usernames and passwords for all of their most frequently visited Websites.
The HoyosID app leverages smartphones as real-time biometrics pattern acquisition devices without a need for additional hardware to carry.
This technology securely pairs users’ mobile devices to the user’s personal computer or tablet, allowing authentication to move out of a browser’s username and password fields and on to the mobile device.
The app uses the forward-facing camera on a smartphone to capture the user’s biometrics–periocular, iris and facial–to identify and log in the user to the chosen Website on his or her desktop or tablet device.
When users download HoyosID onto their smartphones and pair the devices, middleware is installed into the browser, creating a secure link. Multiple devices can be paired, and users can share their account with others, such as family members or business partners.
Once the account is activated and the devices are paired, users can add any Website that they choose and enter their log-in information only once. From then on, when a user selects a Website to log into from the app, his or her biometrics are acquired and verified to grant access to the site.
“At Hoyos Labs, we understood that convenience would be the driving factor in the acceptance of biometrics by consumers, so we focused on creating a technology that will work with mobile devices–the HoyosID app–as most people are already carrying their phones with them everywhere,” Hector Hoyos, CEO of Hoyos Labs, said in a statement. “Secure identity assertion requires multiple pieces to be successful, which many of today’s biometric solutions are missing. In order to be effective, there needs to be a secure middleware and back-end, and with HoyosID, we have created a secure platform that is both incredibly secure and incredibly convenient for consumers.”
The app also includes a “liveness” detector (capable of distinguishing a real person from an image or video) and pattern matching to verify that the person who is attempting to log on to a system or complete a transaction is, in fact, the true identity.
Although the HoyosID solution does include its own proprietary biometric technology, the platform is what the company calls “biometrics agnostic” and supports any other third-party biometric technology through the Biometric Open Protocol Standards (BOPS), according to a Hoyos release.
“Mobile World Congress is the global focal point for the introduction and development of new and innovative mobile technologies, and the Hoyos Labs team saw it as the perfect opportunity to introduce the app that will change how people perceive passwords and identity assertion,” Hoyos continued. “In recent months, it has become clear that both consumers and corporations now understand that the use of biometric and mobile technology is the most effective way to protect our personal material.”