Badge Inc. has received US Patent No. 12,574,371, covering a system that authenticates users by splitting biometric data into cryptographic shards distributed across multiple servers, ensuring that no single server location holds a complete biometric identifier and eliminating the centralized database as a single point of failure or breach.
The patent names co-founders Dr. Charles Herder and Dr. Tina Srivastava as inventors and is assigned to Badge Inc. The shard-based architecture is complementary to Badge’s core cryptographic technique of fuzzy extraction, which derives secure cryptographic keys from variable biometric input, enabling consistent authentication even when biometric readings differ slightly between enrollment and authentication events. Together, the two techniques allow Badge to authenticate users without storing any complete biometric template anywhere on any server.
Badge’s patent adds to a growing IP landscape in distributed biometric authentication, following Anonybit’s February 2025 patent for decentralized biometric storage using Multi-Party Computation and Zero Knowledge Proofs. Keyless won a similar shard-based biometric patent in 2021 for a distributed architecture designed to prevent any single compromise from yielding a complete identity template, demonstrating that the category has drawn sustained IP attention from multiple companies over several years.
Badge, which named cybersecurity pioneer Dan Kaufman as SVP last April, has been building out its privacy-preserving authentication IP with its co-founders as named inventors on its patents. Kaufman, known as DARPA Dan, joined as Senior Vice President of AI and cybersecurity in 2024. Dr. Srivastava is a former NASA rocket scientist and former head of electronic warfare programs at Raytheon. The company emerged from stealth in 2024 and was recognized on TIME’s Best Inventions of the Year and Fast Company’s Innovation Team of the Year in 2025.
Badge has teamed with Thales to integrate its passwordless authentication into the Thales OneWelcome Identity Platform, and has established integrations with Microsoft, Cisco, and Okta. Badge’s argument against conventional biometric systems is that templates stored in centralized databases create unacceptable breach risk for users and organizations, and that the shard architecture removes that exposure by ensuring complete biometric data exists nowhere in reconstructable form.
Sources: Dallas Innovates
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
