Isis start-up Oxford BioChronometrics featured in Guardian
18th July 2014
Oxford BioChronometrics was featured in a story in the Guardian “How your electronic DNA could be the secure login of the future."
Oxford BioChronometrics, spun out from the Isis Software Incubator, has developed software which allows businesses to distinguish between real human users and spam bot page views, which it says make up an astonishing 96.5 per cent of attempted logins on websites, including comments sections, user forums and ecommerce stores.
Oxford University Innovation, the University of Oxford’s commercialisation company, announced that the company has raised sufficient funds from private investors to launch its first product, NoMoreCaptchas.
Adrian Neal, founder and CEO at Oxford BioChronometrics, said:
‘Using markers that distinguish the behaviour of humans from spam bots, our software reveals who or what is knocking on the door of any site or app. We found that at least 96.5% of these attempts to login are by bots, not human users.
‘We can also determine whether ads are being clicked on by bots or humans, providing assurance to online advertisers that their budgets are not being wasted on bots and are actually being seen by humans. We can detect human bots and bot farms, which is a hugely important step for firms wanting to manage their online advertising cleverly and effectively.’
Oxford BioChronometrics’ software captures user inputs and creates a signature that is more individual than a fingerprint. These signatures cannot be replicated by human beings or by bots and create what the company calls a user’s electronically Defined Natural Attributes, or e-DNA.
‘Traditional authentication tools such as passwords, PINs, and one- time-codes are cumbersome and can still be hijacked by viruses and hackers.’
said Neal.
‘As banks and merchants move away from desktop PC online banking and into mobile banking apps, our ability to authenticate users from one device to another becomes very important in ensuring safe online transactions and avoiding scams.’
Tom Hockaday, Managing Director of Oxford University Innovation, said:
‘What this young company has accomplished with the support of our Isis Software Incubator is truly extraordinary and potentially game-changing for online commerce.’
The NoMoreCaptchas software is already being used by hundreds of websites around the world. The company now plans to focus on providing a seamless user experience while working to eliminate the need for passwords all together.
The algorithms used were developed by Neal, a software engineering masters graduate and cryptographics expert at the University of Oxford and his co-founders, also post-graduate researchers at the University.
In 2013 Oxford BioChronometrics was established as a venture within the Isis Software Incubator and the company won global funding platform TreveriMarket’s first Annual Start-up Competition at ICT Spring Europe 2013. As the judges commented,
Press release sign up‘With its potential to truly revolutionize the way we do business on the Internet, Oxford BioChronometrics stood out as the clear winner.’
