The new software-only solution from Veridium, InMotion, leverages user behavior analytics to protect online identities and stop cyberthreats before the damage is done. The platform provides mobile biometric authentication by matching behavioral data from the user’s interaction with their smartphone with the user’s biometrics.

By collecting data from the smartphone’s motion sensors and applying machine learning techniques, InMotion develops a user baseline after just 10 authentications. Future authentications are then compared to this baseline – which refines itself over time as it learns the user’s behavior – and given confidence scores. Lower confidence scores can be used as triggers to begin follow-up authentication via other channels such as SMS, email, or phone.

The combination of low confidence scores and repeated failed authentication efforts, the company noted, could signal potential fraud and, in some instances, result in blocking the user’s access altogether.

“As data breaches and insider threats increasingly plague the enterprise, businesses are in need of a strong solution that can better recognize and verify users’ identities,” Veridium head of product development Ionut Dumitran said. He pointed out that user behavior analytics make it difficult for fraudsters because while obtaining someone else’s phone may be hard, and obtaining their fingerprints even harder, replicating a person’s unique mannerisms is a far greater challenge for fraudsters and other malicious actors.

“By tapping into the power of behavioral biometrics, Veridium InMotion can help businesses diminish the risk of identity as an attack vector and strengthen authentication in a way that is both transparent and frictionless for the user,” Dumitran said.

Founded in 2015 and maintaining offices in the U.S. the U.K., Romania, and Benelux, Veridium demonstrated its VeridiumID with 4 Fingers Touchless ID solution at FinovateEurope 2017. The technology provides greater reliability in biometric authentication by using four fingerprints simultaneously. This adds to the complexity of the data and making the authentication effort more difficult to impersonate.

The company was recognized in nine Gartner reports in 2018, including as a vendor for biometric authentication in seven of Gartner’s Hype Cycle Reports. Earlier this year, Veridium announced that it had developed a biometric federated authenticator for WS02 Identity Server.

Veridium has raised $16.7 million in funding, and includes Citrix Systems, as well as Michael Powell and Michael Spencer among its investors.

Biometric authentication software company Veridium (formerly Hoyos Labs) was recently awarded a $150,000 grant from Digital Financial Services Lab. The grant is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Veridium earned the funds by completing the first DFS Lab Biometrics Challenge, which required groups to develop software-based technologies that can capture and verify fingerprints using only an Android smartphone. The $150,000 winnings are to be used to create a mobile app that makes it easy to enroll and match users in developing countries against government databases in order to ensure they receive proper government aid and money.

Lori Cohen, CMO of Veridium, said, “Our goal is to help design a new banking model, using our biometric authentication technology to bring the unbanked into the financial services system. Additionally, over time, [we aim to] improve their circumstances, making it possible to open a bank account, apply for credit, and achieve a level of financial stability.”

This isn’t Veridium’s first grant. The company earned a grant in 2017 in which it piloted a new digital banking model using biometric authentication in a partnership with Wala. The pilot aimed to bring accessible, zero-fee banking to residents of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Winning the grant from DFS Lab has enabled us to be one step closer to our goal of disrupting the current banking model, which currently excludes billions of people around the world just because they lack identity documents,” added Cohen.

At FinovateEurope 2017, Veridium showcased 4 Fingers TouchlessID, multi-finger touchless biometric authentication that works on smartphones with a camera. This method of biometric authentication can be leveraged to onboard and authenticate consumers, since the quality of the fingerprint photos is equivalent to those captured on traditional flatbed scanners. Earlier this year, the company deployed its VeridiumID platform with Nordea, the largest bank in the Nordic region. Headquartered in London and Boston, Veridium was founded in 2015. James Stickland is CEO.