Victoria’s Plurilock is receiving advisory services and $120,000 in funding from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) for a research and development project.
The funding will support Plurilock’s passwordless authentication initiative, which is designed to enable users to log in to computing environments and systems without having to perform login steps of any kind—no usernames, passwords, USB insertions, or fingerprint and face scans.
“This non-dilutive funding supports our current research and development goals at Plurilock,” says Ian Paterson, CEO of Plurilock.
“The behavioral biometrics and machine learning technologies at the heart of Plurilock products have always logically pointed toward a passwordless experience, and we’re excited that support from NRC IRAP will enable our effort to ultimately bring that experience to market.”
Paterson says that when mature, the technology will enable enterprise users to enjoy a work life that is largely free of login prompts, the need to enter passwords, to carry dedicated authentication devices, or to perform other authentication steps.
Instead, devices that users already regularly interact with will simply recognize them by monitoring the many sensors and other kinds of interactive data that current computing devices generate at all times during use.
Last week Plurilock announced that it has been awarded a new contract by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to continue its development of advanced machine-to-machine (M2M) authentication and anomaly detection tools.
The work supported by NRC IRAP will leverage Plurilock’s existing expertise in behavioral biometrics and invisible authentication, expanding these capabilities significantly to fill the market need for true passwordless authentication solutions.