A Kansas City company has developed a way to secure personal information in the blink of an eye.
EyeVerify is changing the way people use passwords, and the technology makes unlocking your data easier but safer.
How it works
Toby Rush, the CEO of EyeVerify, explained the smartphone camera uses a picture of your eye to create an “eyeprint” to replace passwords.
“I was introduced to a professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City. He was doing just that, he was using regular cameras and what he was doing was looking at the blood vessels in the whites of your eyes as unique identifiers. So some of what fingerprints are doing, he was doing that concept with what we now call the eyeprint,” explained Rush.
Who is using it
Smartphones hold more information than ever. Phones can pay for items at the store, users can check their bank account and apps can allow someone to unlock their car.
Jason Haas uses his "eyeprint" to access his Community America Credit Union bank account. Haas wished his email account used the biometric unlocking capabilities before some hacked into his email.
“When you try to send an email but it doesn't go through, it comes back and says 'Mailer Daemon' says it can't go through. I got 84 of those emails to email addresses I had never seen before,” Haas said.
Now, he’s worried about what can still be accessed. “Tax information, my son's Social Security number, where I go to school, my address, my fiancee's information.”
Why it helps
Haas can’t access the email account anymore because he said the hacker changed his password.
Rush explained people have developed password overload. “The answer has been in passwords, well make them longer, make them more complex and make you change them every 90 days, just the complexity behind passwords and that kind of authentication had really come to a breaking point.”
The "eyeprint" is being used as an additional layer of security.
Rush said, “We don't see fingerprints and eyeprints as competitive, you really do see them as complementary because the two things you do all day long is touch and look at your device.”
More than 25 banks are using EyeVerify now with a total of 100 by the end of the year.
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Shannon Halligan can be reached at shannon.halligan@kshb.com.
