Encryption is using a key to encode or decode information. It ensures that no one can read or alter the information except the person in possession of the key.

Encryption gives us privacy. Privacy lies at the basis of Democracy. This process initiated by the Magna Carta 7 centuries ago gave us all individual rights. The Habeas Corpus (“You haveth a body”) is essentially about privacy.

The question is not: to live or not to live in a post-privacy world, but do we need privacy? In a hyper-connected world where more and more bits of information fly faster, and are used without any user knowledge or consent, privacy becomes even more relevant.

Computers are good at encrypting, but also at decrypting. Even if mechanical calculating machines or computational engines existed before our modern times, from a historical perspective, it is fair to say that it was cryptography that ushered the age of computers.

During WWII, Germany built its Enigma system using electro-mechanical machines to generate random and unique codes to make their military messages unreadable. To crack this system, Alan Turing and many others had to build their own machines — the famous Bombas — and later the first real computer, Colossus. Around the same time, John von Neumann and others quickly built the computer as general purpose machines by separating hardware from software.

Because computers can perform many hundreds of billions of operations per second, they can crack any cypher key in more or less time. The length of such keys is what shields the user. And our body's entropy can generate extra long keys. Aerendir® offers Neurocrypt® technology that can shield and recognize users at the same time.

Imagine if your postman delivered you a letter with a torn envelope and told you that your life insurance policy in favor of your daughter has been approved, but that if you need additional funds to increase its value, he could ask his cousin “Vince” to loan them to you? How would you react? Violated? Not acceptable? Then why do we accept it with our e-mails and all that we are doing across the Internet? A cypher key is like the envelope of time past.

Why did we stop using envelopes? Some would say that we traded convenience and free products by becoming the products ourselves. Aerendir®'s bio-crypto key gives us back the choice of using (or not using) the envelope.

Not at all. Giving a choice to consumers about what to do with their own data is just rebalancing a relationship that does not serve us well as an open and free society. Data could still be considered the new ‘gold,’ however, redefined so the user owns his/her data and may choose to share, or may even sell them. It makes our Internet commercial activities user-centric.

Of course it can, and it is already being implemented. Information Technology (IT) created a paradigm shift in how to conceive and protect citizen’s privacy, and society needs to be creative about this.

From the European Union's Constitution derived legal statutes and implementation directives around privacy for the IT age.

Since 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) and Payment Services Directive Part 2 (PSD2), have been enacted and applied. GDPR defines a broad range of measures, and PSD2 is a directive about the portability of financial personal information.

Some countries have followed the EU's example, and in the US, some states are enacting stricter laws. However, there is no Federal Law about digital privacy in the US at the moment despite all the nefarious consequences — both for the users and the business community — which we are seeing playing.

Aerendir® refers to our bio-crypto key as Neurocrypt®. Essentially, Neurocrypt® generates a super key by training a device simply by touching it for a specified duration. Depending on different safety levels, keys may be device-specific or not. These keys may be used only when the user decides.

Use cases can be sending and receiving emails without needing to be on an external server in order to store a public key. We can also think about encrypting a part of one’s mobile sensitive information, having a personally protected Neurosafe® on a phone, on a computer, on the Cloud or even on a USB key. In the IoT we envision generating keys pairs on the fly.