Introducing Keyless, a deeptech cybersecurity company building the world’s first, truly private, biometric authentication and personal identity management platform that combines multi-modal biometrics with advanced cryptography.

Hi and welcome to the official Keyless blog!

It’s been an incredibly busy, intense and exciting first year! We can’t wait to share more about the problem we’re solving, our breakthrough technology and the unique solutions we are pioneering!

But first, we’d like to start by introducing ourselves — Andrea Carmignani, Fabian Eberle, Dr. Giuseppe Ateniese and Dr. Paolo Gasti — and how we’ve come together with our dream team who will be contributing to this blog.

Andrea has a long-standing curiosity and interest in emerging technologies, which can be traced back to his childhood, where as an eight year old child, his father taught him how to assemble PCs and code — the early days of the internet, with DOS and HTML, services like Napster, and TCP/IP and DNS protocols.

By the time he celebrated his sixteenth birthday, Andrea had already started organizing major music festivals in Rome. He soon became an angel investor — funding startups in the tech space all the way into his early twenties.

Before founding Keyless, Andrea sold and managed multi-million digital transformation projects in Europe and the Middle East, while working as a Strategy Consultant for Accenture and Roland Berger.

In his MBA motivation letters, he mentioned how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs legacies had a tremendous impact on his life, motivating him to do something different. Real innovation. What we do at Keyless today.

Like Andrea, Fabian has always been interested in emerging technologies and their potential to transform the way businesses and people interact across continents and cultures.

As a young boy, he loved spending time playing computer games, ordering various parts to build and optimize his PCs so that they were built for gaming specifically. His decision to study Business Informatics came as no big surprise to his friends and family.

Fabian started his career in enterprise software with SAP at their headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, with stints in New York and Shanghai, while graduating from University of Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Tongji University. He later joined McKinsey in their Business Technology practice, where he led and managed digital strategy and transformation projects across the globe for several years.

In his MBA motivation letters, Fabian wrote about building and leading a technology business that would have a fundamental impact on people’s lives later on in his career, not knowing just how soon we would start with Keyless.

Giuseppe, our third co-founder is ranked among 

the world’s 10 most influential security and privacy scholars

He is a world renowned cryptographer, and currently the Department Chair of Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Giuseppe is particularly interested in digital identity and was immediately drawn to the idea for Keyless — seeing it as a novel way to combat shared secrets, fake accounts and stolen identity.

He has devised several innovations in the security and privacy domains throughout his career. These include 

Our fourth co-founder is the renowned scholar Paolo Gasti. Paolo’s areas of expertise span from behavioral biometrics to privacy-preserving biometric authentication and identification, secure multi-party protocols, and network security.

Paolo is passionate about finding new ways to use cryptographic techniques to protect users and their privacy.

As a young boy, Paolo was fascinated with computers and electronic devices. In high school, he could always be found tinkering with computer hardware and building cryptographic schemes with the intention to eventually break into them.

, that goal is to design a future internet network architecture.

Paolo’s work has been sponsored by the 

Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency

 and the National Science Foundation. He previously worked as a research scholar at the University of California, Irvine, and is a Fulbright fellow.

Andrea came up with the idea for Keyless in early 2017 while teaching himself about blockchain technology and its potential to transform digital services.

During a field trip to Israel he learned more about biometric technology, at a time Apple acquired facial recognition capabilities to build FaceID. This sparked the idea to combine this technology with encryption methods — inspired by the power of blockchain and decentralized applications — to create a solution that would allow people to securely store and share any kind of digital asset, content or confidential information, such as personal memories, passwords, digital assets or private keys, with their loved ones at any time in the future.

We — Andrea and Fabian — then met on a pre-MBA trek in Italy just before beginning our Masters of Business Administration at 

 — one of the world’s most renowned business schools. Immediately, the two of us connected over our mutual interests in blockchain and disruptive technologies, with the goal to start up a company together throughout the MBA year.

During our course, we took part in INSEAD’s Venture Competition with the idea to build on Andrea’s original “time-capsule” or “digital vault” product. While working on developing this idea, we quickly realised that the problem to be solved was so much bigger: authentication and identity management are fundamentally broken.

We noticed that the internet was lacking a universal identity layer that, if present, would enable users to maintain control of their personal information and identity.

This architectural flaw jeopardises user’s privacy and security, while also putting businesses at security and compliance risk.

To solve this deeply rooted problem, we set out to create a universal solution that leverages advanced biometric technology to allow anyone to use their own body — or “

” — to authenticate themselves across the digital world.

We soon managed to pitch our idea to Prof. Giuseppe Ateniese, one of the world’s leading cryptographers, who serves as an advisor to a company Andrea previously invested in. Excited by the idea after hearing it over lunch with pizza and pasta at Rome’s Termini Station (

yes, for real, and it couldn’t have been more genuine

), Giuseppe agreed to join the adventure as third co-founder.

Giuseppe then convinced his former PhD student, Dr. Paolo Gasti, to join the team as a fourth co-founder. Paolo had been working at the intersection of biometrics and cryptography for over a decade and had established his own reputation as an expert in privacy technology and biometric authentication.

Excited by the idea of turning their research into tangible technology, some of Paolo and Giuseppe’s former students who worked with them on privacy and security technologies left their jobs to join us early on — recognising the opportunity to fundamentally transform the way people interact with the digital world.

Since then, we have been incredibly busy building a highly experienced team, which is now about 20 people strong, including dozens of high-caliber PhDs and seasoned industry experts specialising in the fields of computer science, cryptography, machine learning and biometrics.

Initially, we are focusing on developing secure privacy-preserving biometric authentication solutions using our proprietary zero-knowledge technology.

We plan to launch our first product to the public early next year — the Keyless Authenticator. Stay tuned for news on our groundbreaking biometric authentication solutions.

We hope you enjoyed this introduction to how Keyless came together. Our team will be making some important announcements in the near future. To stay up to date, please follow us on 

Hello from Keyless!

Blog Posts

, in general, have been game-changers for cybersecurity in the past couple of years. With facial recognition, consumers can easily access their online accounts, apps, or devices by simply having their faces scanned. This reduces the friction of accessing their favorite products without compromising security. 

A poll conducted by VISA showed that over 

86% of respondents prefer using biometrics

, such as facial recognition, over standard passwords to verify their identity or make payments. The effectiveness of facial recognition is also evident in its widespread adoption, with 

over 131 million Americans using it every day

 to access their favorite apps, online accounts, or devices. 

In today’s article, we will discuss the current state of facial recognition technology, including its real-world applications and benefits. We will also explore the challenges of this authentication technology that different players need to resolve to make it even better in future. So, let’s jump right in!

Facial recognition is a biometric authentication technique that uses the unique features of an individual's face to identify or verify their identity. This technology first gained traction in the early 1990s when government agencies like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) showcased facial recognition programs. 

These early programs demonstrated the potential of facial recognition technology, especially for security and identification purposes. While it was initially developed for government, military applications, and enterprise markets, facial recognition began to gain significant popularity in the consumer market during the 2010s. 

Advances in computing power, machine learning algorithms, and image processing capabilities made it feasible to implement facial recognition in everyday consumer products. Today, facial recognition is widely used in various consumer devices, with one of the most notable examples being Apple's iPhone (through Face ID) and Windows Laptops (through Windows Hello). 

Facial recognition involves capturing an image of a person's face and analyzing its features such as the distance between the eyes, jawline, the shape of the nose, and the contours of the cheekbones. These extracted features are converted into a digital template, which is stored in a secure database online or on a user’s device. In the case of Keyless which uses more secure facial recognition tech, this data is converted into a unique cryptographic key to ensure more privacy. 

When authentication is required, the system captures a new image of the user's face and compares it to the stored template. If the new image matches the stored template, the system grants access or confirms the user's identity. The accuracy of facial recognition has been getting better over the years with studies putting 

the accuracy of the top 100 algorithms over 99.5%

. With this level of accuracy, most facial recognition technologies can differentiate individuals during authentication even if they are identical twins. 

Some of the real-world applications of facial recognition include the following: 

 enhances security and convenience by allowing users to authorize transactions using their faces. This technology minimizes fraud risk since replicating someone's facial features is challenging for cyber criminals. Using facial recognition is also convenient for users and it speeds up the payment process. If the system requires a password as an alternative authentication method, users are more likely to create a stronger one, knowing they can also use the more convenient facial recognition.

Facial recognition streamlines airport security by expediting passenger check-in and boarding processes. It verifies passengers' identities quickly and accurately, reducing wait times without compromising the security of the process. The more advanced facial recognition today ensures that only authorized individuals can pass through checkpoints, leading to a smoother and more secure travel experience.

Facial recognition is widely used to unlock mobile devices such as phones, laptops, and tablets. This biometric method offers a fast and secure way to access devices, replacing traditional passwords or PINs. iPhones, iPad Pros, and several Windows laptops are among the popular devices that support facial recognition authentication. 

Facial recognition is also used in access control systems to grant or deny entry to secure premises. By recognizing authorized personnel, this technology enhances security in sensitive areas such as offices, research labs, and restricted zones. It offers a reliable, contactless method of ensuring that only approved individuals can access specific locations. 

Facial recognition is also commonly used as a component of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), adding an extra layer of security. By combining facial recognition with other authentication methods, such as passwords or SMS codes, MFA ensures that even if one factor is compromised, unauthorized access is still prevented. 

Let’s explore some of the reasons facial recognition is being widely integrated into several products today. 

Facial recognition provides a high level of security by accurately verifying identities. Unlike passwords or PINs, which can be forgotten or stolen, facial features are unique and difficult to replicate, making unauthorized access more challenging. Facial recognition is also widely used to access passkeys for passwordless and anti-phishing authentication. Using biometrics like facial recognition also minimizes shoulder surfing attacks that have become common in recent years. 

Despite being secure, the most common reason consumers love facial recognition is its convenience. Facial recognition simplifies access and authentication processes. Users can quickly unlock devices, authorize payments, or gain entry to secure areas without needing to remember passwords or carry physical keys. If someone is accustomed to using facial recognition to access their device or user account, switching back to passwords or PINs can feel outdated and inconvenient. 

Facial recognition processes are fast, reducing wait times for tasks like logging into devices, checking in at airports, or completing transactions. When well-integrated into a system, facial recognition feels effortless since the user has to do nothing when being authenticated. More people find facial recognition even more convenient than fingerprint scanning since it requires no action on the user’s part. 

Facial recognition enables contactless interactions, making processes more hygienic and convenient. For instance, when accessing a secure building, users can do so without touching physical surfaces. This reduces the risk of spreading germs and viruses, contributing to a healthier environment. Having such authentication technology can be crucial to dealing with diseases like COVID-19 that mainly spread through contact. 

Facial recognition enhances fraud prevention by utilizing unique facial features for identity verification. Since everyone has distinct facial characteristics, it is challenging for someone to impersonate another person successfully, even if they are twins. This technology safeguards against unauthorized transactions and access, as only the verified individual can complete actions. Since facial recognition does not rely on passwords, it also mitigates phishing risks, as attackers cannot steal or exploit non-existent credentials.

Facial recognition technology raises significant privacy concerns as it involves capturing and analyzing biometric data. Users may worry about how their facial information is collected, stored, and used, potentially leading to unauthorized surveillance or misuse. Proper management and robust security measures are crucial to protect this sensitive data from breaches and unauthorized access. Solutions like Keyless’ 

 are solving this by storing the cryptographic key of the biometric data instead of the raw data. 

While facial recognition enhances security, it is not immune to risks. Sophisticated attackers might use techniques like deepfakes or high-resolution images to spoof the less robust facial recognition system. Additionally, if biometric data is compromised, it cannot be changed like passwords, potentially causing long-term security issues.

Some facial recognition systems can struggle in varying environmental conditions, such as poor lighting or obstructed views. Changes in appearance (e.g., facial hair, glasses) or background noise can also impact the technology's performance and accuracy.

Public acceptance of facial recognition technology can be mixed. While some users appreciate the convenience, others may have concerns about privacy and surveillance. Building trust through transparent practices and addressing these concerns is important for wider adoption.

Will facial recognition replace passwords?

Facial recognition is already replacing passwords in several ways. For instance, platforms that use the keyless zero knowledge biometric authentication system no longer need their users to create passwords when registering with them. Facial recognition offers a passwordless authentication method that can reduce the risks associated with password theft and management. 

Why do businesses use facial recognition solutions?

Businesses use facial recognition solutions to improve security, streamline access control, enhance customer experiences, and prevent fraud. It helps in efficiently managing employee access, securing sensitive areas, and offering a seamless authentication process for customers and internal users.

In its current state, facial recognition is generally considered safe due to its use of unique biometric data, which makes unauthorized access difficult. However, concerns about privacy and data security exist, but these are being addressed by using advanced solutions that do not store users' raw biometric data.

To find out how Keyless can help your organization prevent ATOs, improve UX, and protect your bottom line, schedule a 

Learn how facial recognition improves cybersecurity by enhancing security and convenience for online accounts and devices, while addressing privacy concerns and evolving risks.

Blog

Blog

Hello from Keyless!

Passwordless is Just the Beginning.The Future is Keyless.

Passwordless is Just the Beginning.
The Future is Keyless.