Aerendir® is the pioneer of a novel physiologic biometric authentication system called NeuroPrint® (NP®). Founded in 2015, Aerendir® is held by private equity and individual investors. Aerendir® is based in Mountain View (CA), United States.

This novel identification and authentication biometric technology, which we refer to as the Touch Technology® captures live signals from the individual’s unique brain cortex and motricity. Our A-Live® service uses these live signals to determine whether or not the user is present at the time of authentication. Our neuro-proprioceptive system sends unique NeuroPrint® signals that can be sensed by existing hardware in smartphones and tablets without the need of any other internal or external device. This unique signals are nearly impossible to hack. Our A-Cert® service utilizes the security from our Neuroprint® technology to identify users, and bind their unique biometric signature (rather than identifying information like their social security number) to a dedicated Trust Certificate to create a fully private, trustable, linkable, encrypted and auditable digital identity.

Mo-tri-ci-ty (məʊˈtrɪsɪti/noun) is the faculty of movement in our body. The motions of our body as a whole and of our individual body parts are planned, executed and controlled by our nervous system. We are constantly using motricity, without even having to think about it — when we are awake or even asleep. When we are sleeping, changing positions in bed, inhaling and exhaling, or when our eyes move in our sleep we are unconsciously using our motricity. The same is true during our daily activities such as walking, running and holding a cup, or in our case: using our fingers to type on a phone or computer keyboard. All those motions are smooth and effortless because of a very complex and fine system of quality control.

There are many parts in our nervous system that are involved in this sort of quality control mechanism. They are located on the surface of the brain – in a region called the cortex. They are deeper in the brain in a structure called basal ganglia. They are also located in the cerebellum. Other parts are located in the nerves and the muscles themselves. Regardless of their localization, all these mechanisms rely on the specific anatomy of the neuro-muscular system, which is the term used for the interaction between the nervous system and our muscles.

Pro-pri-o-cep-tive (prōprēəˈseptiv/adjective) relates to the stimuli that are produced and perceived within an organism, inside our muscles themselves. It is literally the 'perception of oneself.' It works as a part of the quality control of our movements. When you try to thread a needle, for example, your brain proprioception sends commands to your muscles to control the movement and make sure that you will keep your hand at a steady pace in order to accurately pass that thread through the needle.

When that movement happens, your brain sends signals to the muscles and the muscles display very small motions and tremors that are impossible to see with the naked eye but can be sensed by the “speedometers” that exist in smartphones and tablets.

Those “speedometers” are called ‘accelerometers’ and ‘gyroscopes’, and they exist in standard mobile devices.

Actually, we do not even need motions to have the proprioceptive control; it functions at rest too.

The quality control system of our motions is linked to the anatomy of our brain, our nerves and our muscles. It is influenced by the anatomy of our body. As there are no two persons with perfectly identical bodies, brains and nervous systems, this information is specific to each individual. Even twins — although they bare resemblance — will have differences between their muscles or their brains, because they learn to sit, walk, fall or ride bikes in their own manner. It is thus possible to recognize each individual person.

When our limbs are not moving, it does not mean that the control of the quality of our motions stops. Remaining steady or having one hand laying on a table is also controlled by our nervous system. NeuroPrint® technology is present even when we do not move.

NeuroPrint® technology is based on the discovery that brains possess their own unique structural map.

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University have studied distinct structural connections in the brain, known as “connectomes,” to prove what scientists have known to be true — the structural connections of our brain are unique to each individual. The connectomes of different brains are so distinct that they can be used to identify each person with 100% accuracy. With that being said, the interplay between the cortex and muscle in motor coordination, or motricity, can be detected by the accelerometer and gyroscope present in handheld devices like smartphones and tablets.

Those near-impossible to see motions, which are present whether we are moving or not, and originating in the brain, result in an identifiable 'print' that we have trademarked NeuroPrint®.

Passwords and pins are passé. A recent study shows that at least 770 million biometric authentication applications will be downloaded worldwide by 2019. The numbers are staggering, 65% of mobile transactions will be secured using biometrics by 2020 and 99% of smartphones will be biometrically enabled by 2021.

In the Internet of Things (IoT), it is reported that more than 20 billion objects may end up connected. All of these devices will either need many more passwords — which will be impossible to remember and/or hard to protect — or unique biometric information to identify us.

Biometry operates in three different modalities. They can be a human feature like your fingerprint, iris, or the shape of the veins on the back of your hands, facial recognition and many other physical features. They can be behavioral like the way we walk and run, or the way we hold our phones. Behavorials are based on the repetitive way we behave, and such data can be used to build motion repertoires, or a collection of habits, which define us. Or they can be physiological, which is the data that comes from the live function of our bodies. Examples of the latter would be voice recognition, heart rhythms, or brain activities. And in our case, the same technology can be used for strong encryption in addition to identification and authentication.

Encryption has been around for ages and the Information Technology (IT) revolution did not change that, but it raised the stakes as deciphering by means of brute force became easier. Because of this, the need for even stronger encryption is at an all high. This is like a weapons race. Brain signals can actually give us stable and extremely long “passwords” that we do not need to memorize. Those extremely long passwords may be used to generate encryption keys that would take years with our actual technology to be cracked through brute force.

A simple Internet search shows that YouTube offers 340 tutorials on how to hack a fingerprint sensor. Anyone can find tutorials on how to fool biometric modalities such as facial recognition, voice recognition, and fingerprint. The media has published various stories on the fragility of current biometrics solutions.

There was the case where a German politician had his fingerprint replicated based on a picture taken on a smartphone when he was speaking at a conference. In 2017, a BBC reporter asked his twin brother to call the HSBC bank — a bank uses voice recognition in some of their systems — and he successfully was able to spoof the system. In addition, computer graphic imaging (CGI) compromises facial recognition. Recently, adversarial neural networks have been programmed to annihilate the training of another neural network that was trained to recognize faces at 98% accuracy. By removing just 3-5 pixels from a 10 million pixels image, accuracy fell to zero.

Moreover, all standard biometric technologies store files and run comparisons between the user and his/her setup file. Those files are either stored on the device, or on the Cloud. In cases of a hacking or a breach in a database, the files belonging to many users are compromised and lost. And this loss is permanent because one cannot obtain a new set of fingerprints, a new voice, or a new face.

The fact that no data is stored or exchanged across the Internet protects against hacking and ensures the right of privacy to users. Recognition is based on computations, not on file comparisons. Our Touch Technology® and A-Live® services require a live feed from the sensors to launch computation. NeuroPrint® technology is fast, frictionless, single-factor authentication system. Everything is done on the phone, no computation and calibration in the Cloud, no data are shared or exported from the devices. The users remain users and do not become products or providers of big data.

The most important is that the technology does not operate with any storage data system. The entirety of the identification and authentication process stays exclusively with the person that needs to be identified or to have a transaction authorized. No personal information is transferred to third parties for whatever reason, thus preventing said third party from sharing, selling, or using any private information out of context.

Our team developed methods able to identify and neutralize any other physiological or behavioral signal in order to guarantee that only information sent by the brain is captured. When an individual is authenticated using our Touch Technology® and A-Live®, the process takes place in 5 seconds by neutralizing other parts of the signal: physiological (heart beat), behavioral (individual’s pattern of motion) and contextual (being in a car or in a plane, for example).

Yes, our solution is a single-factor authentication technology. Differently than other technologies, we don’t need to pair with other forms of biometrics because our Touch Technology® covers the entire process. It may, however, be paired with other existing technologies if needed.

1. Next to foolproof unique user identification (twins have differences too!)

2. Extremely low battery drain

3. Advanced and unique frictionless logins and authentications, which is a real advantage in terms of acceptance level for users in the banking industry.

4. Use of a live output, instead of a static feature like real fingerprints, iris, or facial scans.

5. Privacy-protecting technology: no need for centralized databases, no need for content-based information, no need for behavioral repertoires or profiles.

6. Strong encryption comes as a byproduct.

The first market ripe for this truly innovative technology is the banking and payments market, which spans across industries like m-commerce and m-payments. There is now an urgent need to deploy much stronger identity and authentication given the PSD2 (Payments Services Directive, Part 2) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) regulations.

Access control, IoT, health and automotive industries also require very strong biometric technology. Those needs met ideally with ascertain privacy, to be frictionless, and non-hackable or spoofable. At this point in time, industry-standard fingerprints, iris scanners, voice and even face recognition have been hacked or spoofed.

Finance is the most mature biometrics market outside of the government. That is logical: the first thing that most people want to protect is their money. Financial institutions have been early adopters of cybersecurity, and biometrics will be no exception. The perception of security is comforting to banks’ customers, and biometrics can enhance that comfort level. Passwords are stolen. Cash dispensers are compromised with card skimmers and pinhole cameras. Charge card fraud escalates at the point of sale. Protection that was once strong is now weak. Biometrics can restore that strength: those attacks are tougher if the thief must also possess the victim’s biometric identity. Financial institutions want that added protection for their clients and for themselves.

Many industries are getting close to adopting biometrics, but finance is there now. Cash machines with fingerprint readers, vein imaging, and iris imaging are increasingly deployed, especially where fraud is high and law enforcement is low. Innovative point-of-sale authorization requires a fingerprint, facial recognition, or even an electrocardiogram. And mobile banking can be authorized through many types of biometrics, only readable from the customer’s own device. Financial institutions understand the need for this added protection and are ready to act. A survey by Tractica forecasts that, starting from a base of $126 million in 2015, global biometrics finance revenue will reach $2.2 billion by 2024, with cumulative revenue for the 10-year period totaling $11.7 billion at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38%.

In Europe, the PSD2 and the GDPR created an endless market biometrics, initiating a wave of innovation at financial services institutions. The Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) that came into effect on January 12, 2017 must be implemented by banks across Europe. PSD2 will allow customers to pay directly from their account, and have parties retrieve their information for this purpose, rather than having to send their credit or debit card payments through a third party such as Visa. The directive is seen as fundamental to the adoption of open banking, which allows customers to share their personal data via open application programming interfaces (APIs). GDPR is the EU regulation in place to protect customers’ data, failure to meet its requirements can result in fines of up to 4% of global turnover. In this scenario, biometrics is core for the implementation of the PSD2 for both financial organizations and its customers.

Recently, a report from Juniper Research predicts the next biggest shift in mobile payment security will be towards software-based methods, which rely on standard smartphone components. The research forecasts that users of these methods will increase from an estimated 429 million in 2018 to over 1.5 billion in 2023.

All other biometric technologies are competitors, some have existed on the market for a long time and have an established position but are becoming increasingly incumbent and will face disruption.

In reality, we are the highest performing biometric technology when you consider the risks of hacking, spoofing, and level of friction. There is one absolute advantage that Aerendir® offers that is unmatched by any other rival: with live physiology, there is no way that a bot or a robot can impersonate a human. This question becomes more relevant with the advances in AI technology.

When you are a strong innovator with a truly transformative vision you are an entrepreneur navigating in unchartered waters. Biometrics is sufficiently chartered to know where to go and what to avoid. Sometimes, rewards are much higher than risks and this is what we are fighting for every single day as we are convinced that we have a truly unique concept that is years ahead of any other technology.

Face recognition is probably one of the very best biometrics today, together with iris recognition, in terms of false negative ratio (FNR), but both can be easily spoofed.

The world is becoming digital heading at full speed towards automatization, computerization.

The trend is unstoppable, and all sectors of human activity will require an increasingly stronger identity and authentication technology, across all sectors from health, financial services, cryptocurrencies, automotive, to online public services.

Take just one sector like Internet of Things (IoT) and its outlook just for the coming 20 years: it aims to cover all aspects of domotics, autonomous objects, autonomous carriers (boats, drones), using billions of sensors and remote-control needs.

The 2018 Cybersecurity Predictions by Aon’s Cyber Solutions finds hackers are poised to target small businesses that use IoT technology to gain access to data from larger global firms in 2018. The 2018 Cybersecurity Predictions by Aon’s Cyber Solutions predicts a small business IoT breach will create a domino effect that damages a larger company.

The report also found that while 55 percent of small businesses were breached between 2015 and 2016, only a small minority see cybersecurity as a critical issue. This is despite the fact that the overall money spent on cybersecurity in 2017 was $86.4 billion, an increase of 7 percent over 2016.

Because of its sheer size and the impossibility to control it, the IoT is at the heart of this new threat. It’s loosely defined as all software enabled devices we use (from appliances to smartphone sand computers) that can exchange data. Criminals hijacked hundreds of thousands of IoT devices worldwide in 2017. IoT is notoriously unsecured: manufacturers often lack necessary security expertise, constant product innovation creates vulnerabilities, and companies frequently overlook proper patch management programs. Hackers exploit this reality, targeting IoT as a pivot point to enter systems and take control of physical operations. This environment creates a crucial need for our NeuroPrint® technology that can be applied to cover every need of the IoT: automobile, domestic appliances, e-wallet, m-wallet. All these segments need a biometric solution like ours: easy to implement, a near perfect false positive rate, impossible to spoof and near impossible to hack.

Blockchain is much more than just cryptocurrencies or transactions. It is a true revolution if one considers that it is essentially an impossible-to-alter Trust Protocol. It will deeply modify most sectors of human activities, like business relations, legal handling, health care, data storage among others. While it creates ‘trust’ in the data, there is still a gap: you have ‘trust’ but ‘who do you trust?.’ The positive identification of the party giving an order to execute a contract, a transaction or store some data over blockchain is lacking. As far as one can tell, such orders could be issued by any human or a robot, and as of today we will never know the difference. Those are two different problems. Without fail-proof authentication, cryptocurrency can be stolen, a contract can be validated but who is at the other end? Encrypted medical data can be stored, but who do they belong to? A second problem is that an action or a transaction will be added to the immutable ledger of blockchain, but was it initiated by a human or by a bot? What can prevent an AI bot to navigate blockchain in a parasitic way. For a large majority of corporate players in the world of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, the vital question will be to ensure that the final Beneficial/Owner of such transaction is the human being, the Ultimate Legitimate Owner of such power. So, it would be fair to say that our technology is a needed complement to the blockchain.

Our first three products are ready, and we achieved results way above our most optimistic expectations. We offer an authenticator for Identity Assurance across the IoT, a bot segregator to make the internet real again and an encryptor because your body represents a million-character long password. At this point, the products are ready for embedding as a tailor-made solutions for business-to-business customers.

Yes, we have spoken with a number of industry leaders in the United States and in Europe. There seems to be unanimity about our NeuroPrint® technology. We have signed NDAs that do not allow us to disclose their names and what products will deploy the NP® for identification, authentication and encryption.

Check out our In the News page to keep up with our latest developments.

In the course of 2020, it depends mostly on the partner(s) and their needs. We expected to hit the market in 2019, but dealing large infrastructures can be a dance. We will also have a business-to-consumer offering when ready.

We are flexible as we need to adapt to the existing products and devices and form factors on the market, but within the vision of our company, which is to remain independent and pursue further developments of new applications. Our revenue model will likely be a combination of the above.

We do not disclose any financial information. We forecast that Aerendir® will be in the black and generating profits for its shareholders sooner than most investments within other industries. In most verticals, conservative and prudent assumptions indicate break-even points during the first 12-18 months. This is a very good position.