Battling Identity Theft with New Biometric Technologies

Home Depot's investigation of a suspected hacker attack is renewing pressure on retailers and credit-card providers to strengthen payment-system security.  The largest home-improvement chain said recently that it was working with banks and law enforcement on the possible incursion, following a report by KrebsOnSecurity that a "massive" batch of stolen credit- and debit-card information was posted for sale online. 

NXT-ID, a biometric authentication company focused on the growing mobile commerce market, announced that NXTD has submitted a patent application for a method to locally verify identity. 

"This invention is very timely in the face of continued breaches of data and privacy." stated Gino Pereira, CEO of NXT-ID. "In the last two days we have news of intrusions on personal data of celebrities on iCloud and a potentially large data breach at Home Depot (read more below). We continue to push the envelope with new, exciting technologies that protect an individual's privacy by keeping information off the cloud or a network."

The company has also submitted a patent application for methods to integrate intelligent systems into a wallet to form a smart wallet. This patent primarily discusses mechanical methods and approaches to add electronics to turn average wallets into smart wallets and follows an earlier patent submission by the Company for a method to replace traditional payment and identity management systems.

"This invention provides security without sacrificing privacy," says David Tunnell, CTO of NXT-ID. "Local identity validation ensures financial accounts and cards that are added to Wocket smart wallet belong to the owner of that Wocket. We wanted a way for users to securely add their cards without having to sacrifice their privacy to some online background check. This technology is a key enabler of emerging smart wallet technology to reduce fraud."

Chuck Taylor All Star