Biometric identity assurance company Token has appointed Robert Costello, the former chief information officer of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to its Industry Advisory Board.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, is the federal agency, established in 2018 within the Department of Homeland Security, that defends US government civilian networks and coordinates the protection of critical infrastructure such as power, water, and communications. As its CIO, Costello led modernization work across zero trust, a security model that treats no user or device as automatically trusted, along with identity management, cloud adoption, and enterprise architecture. He earlier held senior technology roles at Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and is now chief digital and information officer at Merlin, working with public sector and critical infrastructure customers. Token’s Industry Advisory Board, which guides the company rather than running it, is made up of chief information security officers and government security leaders.
Token sells hardware-based biometric authentication, built around fingerprint verification on secure hardware and the FIDO2 and WebAuthn standards for phishing-resistant, passwordless login, that ties system access to a verified, physically present person. The company has recently pushed that model toward AI agents, placing biometric approval gates around high-consequence actions such as releasing funds or changing access rights, so that an agent can prepare the work but a verified human has to approve it. As organizations give software agents more autonomy, the question of who is accountable for an agent’s actions has drawn a wave of identity tooling; World, for one, extended its proof-of-human checks into agentic workflows with Okta and Vercel. Token, founded in 2014 and based in Rochester, New York, sells its TokenCore line as wearable and portable authenticators that integrate with existing identity, single sign-on, and privileged-access management systems, and it has been building out its leadership and go-to-market, recently naming a new marketing chief.
“As the question shifts from ‘Who logged in?’ to ‘Who approved this action — a human or an agent?’, his judgment is exactly the kind we want guiding us,” said Kevin Surace, chief executive of Token, of Costello’s appointment.
Sources: Token
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
