A stolen password can be all it takes for hackers to disrupt a life, a business, or the world.
The safeguarding of our identity has never been more critical. Constantly evolving AI-enabled DEEPFAKES are now creating enormous security and safety challenges. Enter iVALT, a revolutionary game-changer in cyber security.
iVALT Founder & CEO Baldev Krishan Ph.D. joined me to talk about their groundbreaking solution. He is a 2X Nominated “Entrepreneur of the Year” in Silicon Valley with 20 patents.
Fixing the Weakest Link
Over $170B was spent last year in cybersecurity, yet some of the biggest failures came from the “weakest link in cybersecurity” – a simple phone call by a hacker.
Before iVALT, there was no way to decisively identify the person at the other end of a phone call. Caller ID is easily spoofed, SIM swaps are common, KYC can be compromised, and hackers are highly skilled in just using psychological manipulation to get what they want.
The iVALT mobile app empowers individuals and customer facing workers to demand clear identity on any call (including biometrics) in 1-click.
Most social engineering attacks could be stopped by iVALT before any real damage can be done.
Baldev and I talked about the alarming reality of identity theft, highlighting how even seemingly secure methods like multi-factor authentication fall short in the face of sophisticated hackers.
I myself just went through ‘cyber hell’ when a hacker stole my password from my web hosting site and started buying domains around the world with my credit card. To prove my own identity and get my own website back and functioning, took me one month of pure aggravation! It was honestly outrageous!
Baldev revealed the flaws in current authentication systems and the urgent need for a more robust solution.
The Solution
“iVALT”, said Baldev, “is a game-changing technology offering five plus factors of authentication.” “Our platform leverages biometric data and other variables to create a virtually impenetrable authentication process.”
It seems that with a simple app installation and one-time setup, users can bid farewell to the hassle of passwords and embrace seamless, secure authentication.
With five patents granted and ten pending, iVALT is uniquely positioned to provide the strongest level of identity verification and access management at scale. something no one else in the $30 billion identity market can currently provide he said.
I thought more people should know more about this innovation. iVALT is emerging as a pioneer in shaping the future of identity protection.
Enjoy being one of the first to know about this identity theft game-changer and meet iVALT Founder/CEO Baldev Krishan in this podcast of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show. If you’d rather read than listen the transcript of the audio is below.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
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And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show.
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♪
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Well, this music actually is apropos for the darkness of the theme I’m going to talk about right now, which is people stealing your identity. Now, that’s not nice, and it’s really disruptive, and it’s very dangerous. Hi everybody, I’m Debbie Nigro. You know, I try and have some fun with important topics to get your attention, but this is not funny at all. I recently had my password stolen, disrupted my life, my website was compromised,
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took me a month and a half to get my life back. I was really freaking out. And I have to tell you, it’s not just me, it’s every other day. Something’s happening lately where, you know, scammers, hackers are getting in behind the scenes and screwing people’s lives up, screwing businesses up, screwing the world up. So I’m very excited to meet and introduce you to my next guest.
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This is a big brain, oh yeah, big brain, founder and CEO of a company called iVALT You’re going to meet Baldev Krishan, PhD. He’s a two-time nominated entrepreneur of the year in Silicon Valley, 20 patents. This new venture, and he’s surrounded himself with other big brains too by the way, has five patents granted and ten pending. So you know something is up here. It’s an unbelievable new technology that is uniquely positioned to provide the strongest level of identity verification and access management at scale, something nobody else
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in the $30 billion identity market can currently provide. Hello, Mr. Big Brain. Welcome to my show, Baldev.
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Thank you, thank you, Debbie, and it’s a pleasure for me to be a part of your podcast. Thank you.
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Thank you for the introduction as well. Oh, yes, I’ve done my homework. I know there are a lot of creepy people out there in the world, Baldev. You obviously have spent a lot of time knowing who they are and how to help people not be affected by them,
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but I didn’t realize that something as simple as a stolen password can be all it takes for hackers to disrupt so much.
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That is absolutely true, yes. And you know, you might have heard of this, Debbie, that some of the enterprise or, you know, say you have your services, they’re recommending they use multi-factor authentication. What that means is that in addition to username and password, you also, they send you a code on your mobile device or your email, and you enter that code as a part of the authentication process.
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But the problem there is that even the six-digit code can be compromised because somebody can mimic your phone or email, receive that code, and be able to enter a login to your account.
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Oh, wow.
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This is happening very, very often. You recently heard about, you know, UnitedHealth got compromised. They’re, you know, they stole millions of records.
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Yep.
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There was a story about MGM.
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Yep.
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That somebody got into the account. And so even the multi-factor authentication is not safe. And that’s the reason what we have, we call it five plus factors of authentication. authentication and these are all independent variables, and nobody can duplicate all of
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them simultaneously. Oh, so you went to another level here because what you’re saying is bringing up a visual. I was in the bank last week and a guy came up and was talking next to me to one of the tellers. He said, look, I have my phone here. They keep saying they’ve sent me the code.
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I’m not getting the code. So that must have exactly been what was happening, why he was there and why his money was missing. There you go. Now, I find it challenging that every time I go to sign on lately, somebody does ask me for a two-factor authentication.
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I have to go back to the screen, I have to go to my phone, I have to… So what are you doing differently that’s gonna help me do this faster? Are you saying it’s like one step? You’ve created something with one step?
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Yes, or one click, what we call it. So the way our technology works, you obviously download the app and register. It takes a couple of minutes to download the app and you are ready to use it. What happens on the other side, the service provider, we provide what is called a redirect code.
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They need to insert that code on the back end. Once you log into the service, for example, it could be username and password, and the next authentication will be coming from the website to your phone. And what you do is, since you already registered with iWall, it will ask for biometric authentication on the phone,
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and then simultaneously we capture the user credentials, such as location, the device ID, the time, and where the request is coming from. All of these variables are sent to the back end. And when the back end sees that this is coming from the right location, the right time window, then the user and of course the device is correct. All of these parameters are verified. But again, it requires
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with one biometric authentication. And we capture those credentials at the time of authentication and send to the server. So once those things are captured, the user can be verified and allowed to log in. And ultimately goal is that it will eliminate the use of passwords because once you enter your phone number or your phone number could be linked to the username, you can now be allowed to log in
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with iWord authentication. So the user doesn’t even need to remember password.
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Wow.
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So this is where we’re adding what’s called the passwordless authentication.
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Wow, if you can get rid of my passwords and my need to remember them, you might save my life Baldev. I just can’t take it anymore. I have so many passwords and I have to keep changing them because of this exact reason. They’re like, oh, did you change your password? My girlfriend goes, somebody asked you to change your password.
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How many times can you change a password? Your brain runs out of things to say. And what you’ve done here, which I’m sure everybody who’s got a phone or a computer and does email or communicate in any way. Sometimes you don’t know if the other person on the other side is a fake, all right? So like you get an email from your phone company, AT&T, and it’s like, oh, yo, that’s a million dollars, and you’re like, I just paid my bill.
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Meanwhile, you click on it, and now you’re screwed. What you say you guys have done that no one else has done is you be able to confirm the person on the other end of your online or phone connection or whoever it is, is who they say they are just by installing just by working with having this one app?
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Exactly, exactly. So what you do is, you know, there are two ways to obviously the caller, the person who needs to be identified has to have the app. Okay. And the person who’s asking for the request to identify that person doesn’t need to have the app.
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So they can go to our domain call, ondemandid.com. They enter the caller number and then send the request for authentication. So the request goes to the caller or the person who needs to be identified. They bring their face in front of the app, get authenticated, and all the credentials of the caller goes to the recipient. And they will know the name of the person, where they are, what the device ID is, what time he got authenticated, where the request is coming from.
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So all of these five parameters are received by the recipient and you can verify the identity. And there is no way, let’s say somebody mimics something, you know, biometric, but they cannot mimic your location, they cannot mimic your device ID, all of those other parameters are gonna be compromised.
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This is very important, because the deep fake stuff with the artificial intelligence, people are mimicking people and voices and identities and names. This is really unbelievable that you’ve done this. I’m looking at the how you sign up,
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because I’m just a regular person in the technology world, somebody who is listening to you to try and learn. It says try iValt for free. Install the app, go to ondemandid.com, enter your cell number, click on notification, Yes.
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Go to ondemandid.com, enter your cell number, click on notification, use face ID. Oh, I can’t do that in the morning. I have to do that when I wake up a little bit. But then number three, see your identity dimensions. You’ll see your name, your biometrics, your device ID, your GPS location, your time and
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your app code.
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Once that’s in one time, is that it? That’s it. That’s it. I’m sure everybody does these days. Spam risk and I never pick them up. How would that work to deter a spammer from calling me ever again?
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I don’t want to hear it ring.
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Okay. Now the spammer, if he’s calling you, first of all, in order for them to identify, they have to have the app.
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Okay?
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Okay. And if they don’t have the app, that you know right off the bat that they cannot identify themselves.
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Okay. So you’re hoping this is a technology that all of us embrace?
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Exactly.
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Exactly.
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Who is your, when you started this, because I mean after 20 patents, like, okay, you have yet another idea. Who was your target? Like, who were you really trying to help with this because I’m assuming it was big companies with big databases.
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So let me, that’s a great question David that the reason you know I had the vision about six years ago that the whole identity space is very fragmented means there are all kind of solutions, they are getting, the technology is getting more and more complex but the problem is still not getting resolved. There has to be a simple solution. We all know how tired we are of using different passwords and different logging credentials.
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Sometimes you use the same credentials for multiple accounts. That’s another thing which happens. If one account gets compromised, that means the potential for other accounts getting compromised goes up as well. Right. Anyway, so the idea evolved, you know, having been in Silicon Valley for many, many years,
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you know, you’re always looking for the next opportunity, right? And I was involved in biometric space, you know, 20 years ago, and that technology was not ready at the time because this was based on fingerprint, and the fingerprint sensors were not up to the mark. Their performance was not that great, so they never took off. But when Apple and Google announced the availability of biometrics, or the use of biometrics on
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the phone, that’s when I said, first of all, I envision that that’s going to happen. Because six years ago, Apple and Google did not have that feature. This happened about three, four years ago, three years ago or so. I said, you know, the biometrics is going to become essential to the identity space. And it has to be the other part of the end user. The user has to play a role because when you log into your username with the username and password, you have no control on your identity.
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Correct. Correct. I think I don’t even know who I am anymore. I mean, I’m literally I have so many passwords. I’m not I have to look them up. I have a list of my passwords. I saw a funny little joke the other day, there was two old ladies sitting,
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she goes, I changed my password to incorrect. She goes, this way every time I log in, they say your password is incorrect, that’s why I know.
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So the user has absolutely no control because the other end decides whether it’s the right person or not, right? You know, service provider, but this way, when with the Iowa solution, the user has a role to play.
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There’s some accountability and involvement. So that’s the reason, you know, we capture the biometric on the mobile device, capture the credentials of the user at that time. We never track the user, by the way. We don’t really track where the user is from last time versus now.
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That’s not the point. What we do is we take a snapshot of the user credential at the time of the communication, and that’s the data we send to the backend. So if the user is allowed to log in from the home or from office, from coffee shop,
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those are the locations which are being monitored. Otherwise, if somebody logs from any other location, they can’t get in. So coming back to your question, so the whole fragmented business was, the whole identity business was very much fragmented,
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it’s very complex. So Brian and I, who’s the co-founder of the company, we had the vision that we need to simplify and there’s an opportunity. And with that in mind, we started about five years ago. And that’s what we have accomplished. And it is absolutely, you know, recently we had a webinar on our technology through LinkedIn.
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There were about 690 people signed up for the webinar.
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Wow. I mean, I saw the reaction to the webinar and we’re out of time, but Baldev Krishan, PhD, founder and CEO of iValt.com, little i, and then capital V, capital A, capital L, capital T.com if you want to check that out.
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What about the U? Is there no vault in U?
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No U involved? No U involved.
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Oh, okay. Small i, capital V, capital A, capital L, capital T.com. Shout out to your co-founder, Brian Stout, and Roland Hansen, who’s your CMO in strategy, former VP Corporate Communications at Microsoft. You’ve got some very talented people with you. I wish you the best of luck.
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I wish everybody would check this out. I think it’s going to save a lot of people a lot of aggravation and maybe save the world a lot of aggravation. It takes like three minutes to get this whole process done. I appreciate the knowledge and I will pass it on, Baldev. Thanks so much for your time today.
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Thank you. Thanks, Debbie, for the opportunity and again what we call we are the future of identity. And this is how things are going to be happening.
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Awesome. Awesome. Glad to meet you.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
