BOSTON & TEL-AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Transmit Security, the programmable authentication company, today announced a $40M self-funded round of financing and unveiled a platform that will disrupt the $10B authentication software market. The technology enables organizations to displace passwords and implement any form of identity verification, on any device, across all their customer/partner facing channels.
The company’s founders, Mickey Boodaei and Rakesh K. Loonkar, previously created online banking security pioneer Trusteer, which was acquired by IBM in 2013. Boodaei also co-founded Imperva, a billion dollar provider of cyber and data security products.
The Transmit Security Platform (SP) uses mobile devices as the primary delivery mechanism to add any form of primary or secondary identity verification (facial/selfie, eye, touch ID and fingerprint, voice biometrics, SMS, etc.) to any application (web, mobile, call center, point of sale, ATMs, etc.). Once deployed, an enterprise can make changes to all their authentication methods and identity risk flows without any code changes to their applications.
By 2020, biometric authentication is expected to be the main way financial, healthcare, telecommunication and retail enterprises verify customers, according to Goode Intelligence, a research and consulting company. However, current approaches require each authentication technology be individually integrated with each application. These expensive and time consuming coding projects have transformed authentication into an innovation bottleneck.
“After working with more than 400 of the world’s largest financial institutions, we identified authentication as the next major hurdle they, and other industries, face from a security, fraud prevention, regulatory and customer experience perspective,” said Mickey Boodaei, CEO of Transmit Security. “By decoupling authentication and anti-fraud from the application, we’ve built a platform that allows any form of identity verification, as well as anti-fraud measures, to be instantly delivered on any web, mobile, branch, call center, or other application. The benefit of our approach is that customers can execute on unique and complex projects in a matter of minutes or hours.”
Add Biometrics for Password Replacement
To eliminate the need to embed authenticators into each application, Transmit SP uses a simple interface to offload all authentication and provisioning tasks. It provides a wide set of built-in authentication methods that enable organizations to mix-and-match any combination of facial, eye, voice, fingerprint recognition, one time passwords (OTP), push notifications, pattern drawing, Device ID, and other 3rd party or internally developed authenticators.
Once an application is connected to Transmit SP, any of the authenticators and any authentication process can be changed, added or removed without any software development. Transmit SP also supports any existing third-party authentication or anti-fraud products in use, and can orchestrate real-time responses based on customer configured policies.
Programmable Authentication and Orchestration
To eliminate integration barriers that today separate authentication, fraud prevention and security, Transmit SP accepts inputs from various sources at runtime to automatically assess risk and challenge users with the appropriate form of authentication. It can collect data from user devices (type of hardware, location, security status, etc.), business applications (transaction value, account type, age, etc.) and risk-detection systems or threat feeds. By aggregating and making decisions based on security context and risk factors, both at login and anytime during a session, Transmit SP provides the agility to dynamically adapt the customer experience based on evolving regulatory, fraud, or security requirements.
For example, it can be programmed to allow users into an application without any interactive authentication as long as the user comes from the same location, uses the same device, and performs the same activities. Transmit SP can challenge the user to authenticate when new activities are performed or signs of risk are detected at any time during the session. The platform can also be programmed to allow users to switch between channels such as mobile, web, call center, etc. without the need to re-authenticate.
“Today, most enterprises are hard-coding authentication, anti-fraud logic and complex exceptions directly into each application, which prevents them from being able to quickly deploy new identity flows and use cases,” said Rakesh K. Loonkar, president of Transmit Security. “Since our platform unifies authentication, and fraud prevention in a new architecture, it allows customers to change identity tools and flows without code updates to their applications, for faster time to market for new features and innovations. We can demonstrate how customers can execute on complex identity projects, and thousands of use cases, in literally minutes.”
Enable Omni-Channel, Mobile Centric, Identity
To provide a seamless experience for customers, Transmit SP can connect to any type of application or channel. Since the platform maintains a unified view of all the application connections associated with a user, enterprises can implement automated identity trust handoff use cases between channels.
For example, Transmit SP can replace knowledge-based questions in call center scenarios. When a user authenticates to a company’s mobile app and clicks to contact support, the representative on the phone is not required to perform any additional authentication. Alternatively, if a user calls customer support directly, a notification can be sent to their mobile device as part of the voice response process to authenticate them prior to reaching a representative.
Availability | Deployment
The Transmit Security Platform is available immediately. It can be deployed on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration.
About Transmit Security
Transmit Security allows organizations to implement frictionless omni-channel (web, mobile, phone, ATM, branch) authentication without modifying their applications. The company’s technology supports any authentication technology, from any vendor, in one modular, micro-services platform that slashes time-to-market and cost-to-market for new identity related projects. Transmit Security’s founders created Trusteer (now IBM Security) and Imperva (IMPV on NYSE). The company’s research and development team is made up of former members of Unit 8200, the elite Israeli Intelligence Corps. Transmit Security is self-funded, and based in Boston and Tel-Aviv. For more information visit http://www.transmitsecurity.com/ or follow us on Twitter @TransmitSec.
