UPDATED 23:21 EDT / OCTOBER 03 2017

INFRA

HYPR raises $8M to expand its decentralized authentication platform

HYPR Corp. has raised $8 million in a Series A round in its bid to rid the world of all these mass data breaches.

Founded in 2014, HYPR offers an enterprise-focused decentralized authentication platform that ensures that personal credentials remain safe on individual devices. The platform is designed to greatly reduce the risk of a large data breach by eliminating the need to centrally store credentials. It also claims to secure any form of authentication, including passwords, PIN numbers and biometrics such as fingerprint, face, hand, retina, iris, voice and behavior.

HYPR is applicable in a wide variety of enterprise uses, including banking, insurance, online payments and retail environments. It also covers “internet of things” devices via an omnichannel authentication platform designed for what it describes as Bio-T, a biometric internet of things. The support for IoT devices stretches into a range of possible uses, such as connected cars, locks and homes.

“At HYPR’s inception we meditated on a complex problem, ‘if protecting personal credentials is critical to ensuring the safety of our connected world, how can the public rely on enterprises to be responsible for our personal data?’” HYPR Chief Executive Officer George Avetisov said in a statement. “The answer was simple – decentralize the credentials and enterprises won’t have to store them in the first place.”

HYPR is evidently finding a willing audience for its product, with 25 million users across Fortune 500 companies. It doesn’t hurt that there’s nearly nonstop coverage of major companies being hacked, such as Equifax Inc. in September.

The round was led by RRE Ventures that included existing investors RTP Ventures, Boldstart Ventures and Mesh Ventures. As part of the deal, RRE Ventures’ James Robinson IV will join HYPR’s board of directors. Including the new round, HYPR has raised $12.8 million to date. The company said it would use the new funds to accelerate deployment of its next-generation security solutions.

Image: HYPR

Since you’re here …

… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.