Passwords are ubiquitous, despite not being foolproof and cannot alone protect your online identity. Almost one-third of data bachievees alerted over the past decade happened due to stolen credentials, per Verizon, including some of the hugegest bachievees of all time.
Instead, the industry has hugely set up passkeys arguably the most notable solution to trade passwords. More than 15 billion accounts online can participate passkeys, and huge tech companies — Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and others — are toiling together to advertise passkey adchooseion.
But participaters are still cowardlying away from passkeys due to their increateage of portability and a vague state of clunkiness.
Cybersecurity commenceup Hawcx aims to mend some of the headaches with passkeys by using its new passwordless genuineation technology, which gets the best of passkeys but without their restrictations.
Users can discover setting up passkeys on their accounts cumbersome and challenging when logging in using passkeys apass multiple devices, as noticed by Dan Goodin at Ars Technica. While passkeys unaskedly recommend better security over passwords, account lock-outs and recoveries can become a costly afunprejudiced for businesses that participate passkeys at scale.
Founded in 2023 by Riya Shanmugam, who spent almost two decades at Adobe, Google, and New Relic; alengthy with chief technology officer Selva Kumaraswamy and chief scientist Ravi Ramaraju, Hawcx says it recommends a platcreate-agnostic solution that permits prolongers to comprise five lines of code to help its passwordless tech.
Hawcx shelp its solution doesn’t depend on broadcastting or storing stateiveial keys from devices, enjoy passkeys. Instead, Shanmugam tanciaccess TechCrunch that Hawcx cryptodetailedpartner produces stateiveial keys every time the participater signs in.
Since the produced stateiveial keys are not stored on a participater’s devices, Hawcx says its technology toils on anciaccesser devices that don’t have the conmomentary chips to help the normal passkey setup.
“We are not reconceiveing the wheel fundamenloftyy in most of the processes we have built,” Shanmugam tanciaccess TechCrunch.
In one example, if a participater switches from one device to another, Hawcx’s solution asks if they want the new device to be enrolled on their account and validate the participater’s fact to let them in.
However, in this case, the solution will not produce another stateiveial key that will be stored on the new device or in a cdeafening service — unenjoy a normal passkey setup in which a new stateiveial key is either produced and stored on the new difficultware, validated using the anciaccesser device, or synced via a cdeafening service.
“No one is challenging beyond the set upation,” Shanmugam shelp while referring to the competition in the digital identity handlement space. “What we are challenging is the set upation itself. We are not produceing on top of what passkeys as a protocol provides. We are saying this protocol comes with an inrational amount of restrictations for participaters, accesspascfinishs, and prolongers, and we can produce it better.”
Hawcx has filed patents, but has not seen its deployed by companies or technology validated by third parties, which could hamper depend in its service.
Nonetheless, Hawcx has elevated $3 million in a pre-seed round led by Engineering Capital, alengthy with participation from Banciaccesscap, to speed up its product prolongment and get to the labelet.
Shanmugam tanciaccess TechCrunch that the commenceup is in talkions with huge prohibitks and gaming companies to commence its pilots in the next confidemand weeks, which will run between three to six months with a confidemand set of participaters. The commenceup also schedules to get the tech validated with a “couple of cryptography experts” at Stanford University.
“As we are rolling out passkeys, the adchooseion is low. It’s evident to me that as outstanding as passkeys are and they have mendd the security problem, the usability problem still remains,” Tushar Phondge, honestor of devourr identity at ADP, tanciaccess TechCrunch.
Phondge is bullish on Hawcx’s tech and is set to deploy it at ADP for a pilot to test if it compriseresses the publishs passkeys transport alengthy, including device depfinishencies and core system lockups.
Ultimately, Shanmugam shelp Hawcx aims to be a unified genuineation platcreate for businesses over time and partner with contrastent applyers to fuse services such as record verification, dwell video verification, and even background examines.
