Perth team wins NYC Cybertech showcase

Picture of Liam Wignell
Liam Wignell
// // A Perth development team has recently won a New York CyberTech showcase event just several hours after patenting a new passwordless technology solution that is set to disrupt a billion dollar industry...

// A Perth development team has recently won a New York CyberTech showcase event just several hours after patenting a new passwordless technology solution that is set to disrupt a billion dollar industry…

BankVault, a cybersecurity innovator that has offices in San Francisco and West Perth,  has been busy building different new passwordless technology solutions recently.

This industry is already worth over $1 billion and it is believed over the next few years most online services will be offering some form of passwordless logins.  

Graeme Speak, founder and CEO of BankVault, had the idea for a passwordless login when meeting with the head of security for a major password management company. This meeting occurred in a Rum Bar in San Francisco.

“I simply advised him he had a gaping flaw in his service and we have a solution,” Graeme told Startup News.

Graeme Speak

“When any password manager loads a web form with login credentials it is clear text and the asterisks on screen are only a mask for human eyes.  So, any software in the user’s browser intercepts this instantly.  That is a gaping security flaw in web browsers which can never be fixed by password managers.  We’ve solved that problem.”

“‘Okay, how do you do that?’ he said. I had hooked him,”

“In that moment he validated everything I’d been thinking.  It was as clear as crystal that we had a formidable technological advantage over all password managers.  Not only that, I realized that if we partnered we could catapult them away from freemium-consumers into the enterprise market, said to be ten times the size.”

“I bit my tongue, and then asked for his business card that night… I couldn’t sleep as the whole world lit up for me.”

Graeme Speak

The final solution turned out to be radically simple and only requires 20-lines of code in order to be integrated onto any website.  

After filing the patent one evening Perth time, a few hours later Graeme was getting to ready to pitch for a New York Cybertech showcase which consisted of a line-up of 10 pre-selected cyber scale-ups including three advanced passwordless solutions.

BankVault won.

Perth team wins NYC Cybertech showcase
Image Supplied

BankVault’s solution is designed to solve the problem of the relative scarcity of technical manpower in organisations. It is ten-to-one hundred times faster to deploy than competitors by not requiring infrastructure changes, thanks for its twenty lines of code required to integrate a web server API.

No client software or user setup is required.  

Graeme says the company is breaking all records with every single ISV and enterprise prospect requesting a trial or pilot. 

“We’re onboarding Independent Software Vendors and enterprises at the rate of one each day, and looking to double this pace.  It’s such a compelling argument for any website owner – reduce friction for users and increasing their security”

Graeme Speak

“The surprise was discovering a stronger USP than good cybersecurity.  It turns out that seamlessly access to online services is a big priority for online business because increasing user engagement creates sticky customers, and that is a business driver.  Providing cybersecurity to customers then builds trust.”

The BankVault system includes WebAuthn, the core of the FIDO2 standard for authenticating web applications.  This harnesses the biometrics of a user’s phone as proof-of-presence. 

“We can restrict a user’s login to a specific person and prevent revenue leakage when people share their login credentials with friends or colleagues.  Of course, your fingerprint never leaves your phone, thanks to the genius of the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange which keeps your identity secure but authenticates you so that you can access the service you’re meant to have,” says Graeme.

“We’ve launched in the US and UK, but Perth is home-base and we would love to work with local startups.  It takes almost nothing for a company to set up a trial of Passwordless.”

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Featured Image: Graeme Speak (supplied)

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Picture of Liam Wignell

Liam Wignell

Liam has extensive experience across marketing, procurement and project management roles in both the public and private sector. He contributed to Startup News from 2020 to 2023 and was contracted as Managing Editor in 2022.
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