Nok Nok Labs

Nok Nok Labs
Private
Industry Authentication
Founded 2011
Founder Ramesh Kesanupalli
Headquarters Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Phillip Dunkelberger (President & CEO)
Ramesh Kesanupalli (Founder & FIDO Visionary)
Rajiv Dholakia (VP Products)
Naga Nagarajan (VP Engineering)
David Wiener (VP & General Counsel)
Todd Thiemann (VP Marketing)
Website www.noknok.com

Nok Nok Labs is a venture-backed company located in Palo Alto, California that develops software to enable strong authentication for consumer-facing mobile and web applications.[1] The company has been a driving force in establishing authentication standards under the auspices of the FIDO Alliance (Fast IDentity Online).[2][3]

History

Nok Nok Labs was founded in 2011 by security veterans from PGP, Netscape, Paypal and Phoenix Technologies with funding from DCM and ONSET Ventures.[4] Nok Nok Labs has worked to establish authentication standards that can be used by an ecosystem that includes device manufacturers, the security vendor community, and organizations that rely on authentication services. Nok Nok Labs is one of six founding member of the FIDO Alliance (Fast Identity Online), an organization that has since grown to over 240 members.[5] Nok Nok Labs closed a C Round of funding in August 2015.[6]

The company’s authentication technology has been spurred by a number of industry trends including mobile computing, e-commerce, the increasing sophistication of hackers, and the fragmentation inherent in previous approaches to online authentication. Nok Nok Labs positions its technology as simplifying a user’s authentication experience, improving security, providing better privacy and reducing costs by unifying the existing online authentication silos and avoiding password reset costs. Nok Nok Labs has worked with the mobile ecosystem including authenticator providers, device manufacturers, and organizations deploying its technology including NTT DoCoMo, Paypal and AliPay.[7]

Technology

Nok Nok Labs’s focus is authenticating user identity using whatever method is available on a user device (fingerprint, password, PIN, iris scan, voice, face recognition, etc.). The company has taken advantage of industry trends including the proliferation of mobile devices that are shipping with sophisticated authentication technologies such as fingerprint readers.

Nok Nok Labs’ leverages the FIDO UAF 1.0 specification, a scalable strong authentication protocol designed for modern computing requirements and the Internet of Things. Nok Nok has indicated that it will support future iterations of the FIDO specifications as they emerge.[8]

Products

The Nok Nok Labs provides client-side and server-side software to facilitate user authentication. The client-side product is an software development kit (Nok Nok App SDK) that supports both Android and iOS.[9] The server-side product is named the Nok Nok Authentication Server. All of the Nok Nok Labs offerings are certified to support the FIDO UAF protocol. [10][11]

References

  1. Kharif, Olga (March 28, 2013). "Innovator: Ramesh Kesanupalli's Biometric Passwords Stored on Devices". Bloomberg Business. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  2. Olavsrud, Thor (February 12, 2013). "FIDO Alliance Says, 'Forget Passwords!'". CIO. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  3. Messmer, Ellen (November 26, 2012). "PGP Corp. co-founder's startup targets cloud authentication". Network World. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  4. Reader, Ruth (December 9, 2014). "Nok Nok Labs raises $8.25M to enable biometric authentication for enterprise". VentureBeat. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  5. Martin, Eli (October 15, 2015). "In The Boardroom With... Mr. Ramesh Kesanupalli". SecuritySolutionsWatch.com. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  6. Nanclares, Cindy (August 25, 2015). "Biometric authentication innovator Nok Nok Labs raises $16.25M". VentureBeat. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  7. O’Neill, Peter (June 1, 2015). "Rajiv Dholakia of Nok Nok Labs on DOCOMO and FIDO". FindBiometrics. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  8. Worthman, Ernest (October 8, 2015). "Security Made Easier: Phillip Dunkelberger of Nok Nok Labs explains what's behind Fast IDentity Online and why it's so important for the IoE.". SemiconductorEngineering. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  9. Perala, Alex (October 1, 2015). "Nok Nok App SDK Supports iOS 9, Android Marshmallow". MobileIDWorld. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  10. Heun, David (October 26, 2015). "Nok Nok Labs Adds Mobile Authentication Options". PaymentSource. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  11. Mayhew, Stephen (November 4, 2015). "FIDO Alliance certifies 72 authentication products including iOS solutions". BiometricUpdate. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
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