Today, NexID Biometrics, a company that claims to be the first to bring liveness detection software for fingerprint sensors to mobile devices, announced that it has received a series of funding grants totalling $325,000.
The new funding, which includes money from a highly competitive award for emerging companies in central New York State, will be used to further the company’s research into additional modes of authentication.
The National Science Foundation is sponsoring joint research between Clarkson University and West Virginia University and NexID will be participating. Expanding on this work, NexID will be developing commercial liveness detection for security systems that operate using facial or iris recognition. This will be undertaking with funding from Seaway Private Equity Corporation.
“We expect this funding to extend and accelerate our operations through the two to three years it may take before NexID begins to realize royalty revenue from the licensing of our technology in these new areas,” explains Dr. Stephanie Schuckers, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clarkson University and also the CEO of NexID.
“We’re proud of the renowned expertise in biometrics and cyber security that Dr. Schuckers and NexID bring to Clarkson,” praises University President Anthony Collins, Ph. D. “It’s an honor for our institution to be associated so closely with their leadership in this highly specialized area.
“Further,” continues Collins, “as a member of the Seaway Private Equity Corporation’s Board of Directors, I’m pleased to see that NexID, truly a global center of excellence in biometrics technology here in the northern New York region, is receiving matching funds to further leverage this opportunity for growth.”
With the growing public use of biometrics gradually taking steps toward ubiquity, a focus on liveness detection, otherwise known as anti- spoofing, is of the utmost importance. The two most prominent biometric featuring smartphones on the market right now – the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 5S – both suffered from public break-ins via wood glue spoof on the Internet within a week of release. NexID expanding its commitment to liveness detection beyond the fingerprint and into the realm of different biometric modes is comforting news in this regard.
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