As the internet gives new dimensions to people’s lives, security concerns are on a rise. From availing banking services anytime, anyplace to accessing valuable online content- everything needs a password. But with this convenience, there also comes a very real concern to create a secure method of proving an identity that cannot be compromised.
People have fallen out of love with passwords as a form of identity proof, as it has become highly cumbersome to create a strong password that conforms to policy, and almost impossible to remember these passwords without writing them down. But more importantly, due to the increasing complexity of passwords, and the growth of malware based keyloggers, they have become an easily exploitable chink for the hackers to attack systems through.
Password breaches costs companies, individuals and the economy millions of dollars every year. Password hacking extends beyond elite-profile attacks, as it regularly victimizes small ventures and personal accounts too.
So, to solve this dilemma, Forticode have developed world’s first “Personally Managed Authentication” platform underpinned by the patented “OneTiCK” indeterminate ciphering process. Launched as “Cipherise”, it provides a simple personally controlled way to authenticate to a platform or service using a single, simple password, while also protecting the enterprise by not requiring any form of centrally managed (and exploitable) credentials.
Innovator’s Innovation
Tony Smales: The back bone of Forticode’s vision is to make the internet safe again, by allowing identity authentication for anyone, at any location, in any language and using any device.
Tony Smales, the creator and founder of Forticode, has a diverse technology background starting as a game developer at the age of 15. Having a keen interest towards technology he pursued his higher education with a degree in Computer Science specialising in Artificial Intelligence, and then worked across several IT consulting firms including as the Development Manager role in a wireless R&D company. He has also served as GM and CTO for some renowned gaming, R&D and petrochemical companies. Having more than 30 years of experience, Tony has proved himself to be a highly motivated, entrepreneurial and people focused individual with high levels of passion dedicated towards delivering solutions with understanding and collaboration.
Converting Challenges into Assets
Every start-up during their initial stages face the financial crunch, so unsurprisingly Forticode had the challenge of balancing the continual process of innovation against the permanent risk of running out of money, before their innovation achieves market traction. However, rather than being hobbled by this continual start-up pressure, they made a key decision to structure their company for long term success, creating a formal board to ensure compliance with good governance, and funding their business through limited private share issue processes, with complementary funding through the Australian Government’s R&D concession process.
Cipherise: Revolutionising the Authentication Process
Cipherise – the world’s only Personally Managed Authentication platform, represents the culmination of almost 5 years of development and design. Underpinned by the patented OneTiCK indeterminate ciphering process, Cipherise simplifies the login process using a single simple password, while concurrently enforcing ‘invisible’ Multi-Factor authentication to keep user credentials safe and secure. Cipherise also supports the requirements of Physical Access for buildings using the same common authentication process, while also offering a way to secure the IoT world where authentication is currently almost non-existent.
But their greatest simplicity comes from using Cipherise to securely access a system, application or service without any form of interaction. Using a simple QR scanning process, Cipherise completes a multi-factor authentication process invisibly – once scanned, and validated; the user is immediately logged on. This simplicity (with the embedded and hidden security) is being seen as an ideal solution for public facing website access, and it is currently being trialled across several Australian businesses.
Being Unique
Forticode has been described as introducing the only innovation in the field of access management within the last 10 years. Unlike other companies competing in this space, their focus on user experience as a priority has seen the innovation developed that is now embodied by the Cipherise platform.
It is important to understand that individuals rarely get hacked directly, and moreover it’s the poor security by their service providers that leads to personal data being compromised. Cipherise eliminates this latent risk by removing the need of service providers to ever hold users credential data, and have introduced an idea of using a simple “asymmetric private key-pair” model to allow a trust ‘assertion’ the be generated through the Cipherise mobile application.
Cipherise is built around the OneTiCK indeterminate ciphering technology, and Forticode have proven that it eliminates all attack surfaces within the authentication process, making it immune to common exploits such as brute-force, key-logging, recording, observation, and man-in-the-middle threats. They believe that they are sole contender in the race, having developed a method to provide protection against all these threats from within a single application, and via a simple and convenient user experience.
Future Prospects
Forticode wants to “change the way the world authenticates”. Their goal is to make people safe while accessing online systems, applications and platforms, by removing the threat of being compromised via login process. They believe that their solution will be adopted across all vertical lines of the industry and that over time, users will become familiar with Cipherise, ultimately demanding that their service providers implement this new way of logging in.
They are also looking forward to extending the platform to allow security companies to move away from transferable card swipe systems for building access, and have prototyped some ideas to significantly change the method of offline storage for data and information.