The Year in Biometrics Leadership: FaceTec

The 2018 FindBiometrics Year in Review results are in. Drawing data from nearly 200 identity and identity-adjacent professionals, the 16th annual biometrics industry survey is a snapshot of attitudes in authentication, security, privacy, and surveillance from the experts who know it best. Among the 2018 Year in Review’s strongest trends were excitement about facial recognition, the continued importance of liveness detection, and the critical need for standardized biometrics testing.

Readers of FindBiometrics will no doubt associate those key topics with FaceTec, a biometric software company specializing in 3D face authentication. The company made biometrics industry history in September, becoming the first biometric facial recognition vendor to attain Level 1 Certification in the iBeta Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) test, with a 100-percent anti-spoofing score. The third-party testing subjected FaceTec’s ZoOm 3D face login software to days of aggressive spoofing attempts, more than 1500, all of which it deflected.

UPDATE: FaceTec Attains Level 2 Certification in iBeta Presentation Attack Detection Test

Last year, FaceTec exemplified biometrics industry leadership, and in more ways than one. The iBeta certification was significant, but FaceTec’s 2018 was also remarkable for being filled with expansion, partnerships, and education initiatives. In November, FaceTec released the first in a series of white papers shedding light on the importance of liveness detection and standardized third-party biometrics testing – the subject of a two-part interview with FindBiometrics.

Lending his company’s leading voice to the FindBiometrics Year in Review, FaceTec CEO Kevin Alan Tussy spoke with FindBiometrics Managing Editor Peter Counter about his company’s exceptional 2018. Here are the highlights in FaceTec’s own words:

The iBeta Test was a game-changer

Kevin Alan Tussy, CEO, FaceTec: We had a great year. Certainly the best year we’ve ever had. We booked an enormous amount of revenue this year. Our user growth is very steady and we have not had one production customer who has put ZoOm in their app and then taken it out. ZoOm is now being used on five continents.

Our biggest news is probably the iBeta test that we passed, the Level-1 iBeta Presentation Attack Certification. iBeta is the NIST/NVLAP-certified testing lab out of Colorado I’ve mentioned quite a few times in interviews with FindBiometrics. Anyone in the biometrics industry who is reading this should consider iBeta and this presentation attack detection test. And, of course the ISO 30107-3 standard. Passing that test was our number-one accomplishment in 2018. No one had ever passed before we did. Many have tried and failed before us, so we are very proud of that and of our development team. And my CTO, Josh Rose – who in my opinion is the foremost expert in the world on face authentication – really delivered with our ZoOm build that passed the test. And it’s only gotten better in the months since. Just recently, we passed Level-2 of the PAD test.

Partnering with Jumio, FaceTec created a biometrics superteam

Kevin Alan Tussy, CEO, FaceTec: The other fantastic news, I mean, there’s so much, but as far as biz-dev: partnering with Jumio – they’re the world’s leader in digital identity. They’re doing over 150 million digital identity onboardings for companies like CoinBase, AirBnB, and I think about 500 other companies worldwide. They are by far the leader. They might even do more business than all the other digital identity companies combined. And they are growing quickly. They’ve got a fantastic product, they’ve got a fantastic team. I’ve spent a lot of time with their chief of product, Philipp Pointner, and with their CEO, Steve Stuut. These guys know what they’re doing, they know where they’re going, and it’s a very, very impressive company both from the outside, and definitely once I got to know their team, from the inside. And we’re very pleased to be the technology partner that provides the face authentication and liveness detection to Jumio across the board, as sort of an OEM technology provider to the company and its customers.

FaceTec bolstered its own ranks

Kevin Alan Tussy, CEO, FaceTec: We’ve gotten a few different awards in 2018. We’ve hired some fantastic people. We have Steve Cook in the UK, who has the largest biometrics group on LinkedIn with over 23,000 members. Steve’s heading up our UK and Europe initiative – a fantastic guy who’s been around this business for quite a while. He knows his stuff and we’re fortunate enough to bring him on this year.

We’ve already started to be bring on a lot of new employees in 2019. Some other leaders from the industry, like Rich Lobovsky, who has been with Samsung and Verizon. You will be the first to know when we can make more announcements, Peter.

And it’s platform has matured

Kevin Alan Tussy, CEO, FaceTec: And then there’s our webcam feature. We released the ability to use ZoOm via webcams and mobile browsers, and we tied our mobile devices and webcams together this year, a really powerful offering. Our platform is now in a place where the sum is far greater than the parts. Once you can provide to an organization the ability for their users to interact via biometrics, and log in via face biometrics too – over their laptop, their desktop, their phone, and their tablet – then you start to have a real-world password replacement. And that’s what we’re seeing.

Now the stage is set for an epic 2019

Kevin Alan Tussy, CEO, FaceTec: We’re adding partners all over the world. South America is really important for us. Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa. We’re going to have a real breakout year in 2019. I expect many millions of authentications to take place on our platform every month, starting to significantly ramp-up in Q1. We’re expecting to see massive growth over the entire year. It’s hard for me to predict where we’ll be by the end of 2019 because the flood of customers, and the flood of new interests and new partners is, at this point, practically overwhelming.

UPDATE: FaceTec Attains Level 2 Certification in iBeta Presentation Attack Detection Test

The iBeta Test was a game-changer

Partnering with Jumio, FaceTec created a biometrics superteam

FaceTec bolstered its own ranks

And it’s platform has matured

Now the stage is set for an epic 2019

Take a look back on FaceTec’s highlights from 2018:

Related News

Footer

Follow Us