Featured Pitch:Vidoop
Web Site: www.vidoop.com
Headquarters: Portland, Oregon
Year Founded: 2006
Founders: Joel Norvell, CEO, and Luke Sontag, President, Technology
Investors:
Employees: About 30
By Joel Norvell
How many passwords do you currently have to remember? How often have you tried to log onto an important Web site, such as your bank or retirement account, and struggled to remember which username and password you registered with? On the flip side, do you worry that your financial information is unsafe, because you use the same username and password at every location?
Vidoop got its start in 2006 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I met co-founder Luke Sontag. Luke had gotten a glimpse of the security problems that plague large financial institutions when he worked as a security analyst at a bank. We knew that that there had to be an easier way to handle secure logins.
We founded Vidoop to provide a solution to the problem of remembering complex passwords that provided a great user experience while still maintaining the strong login security required by our most sensitive online accounts. At the same time, we discovered there was also the opportunity to turn logins into a revenue generator for financial institutions.
Protecting users’ identities has become a hot topic lately. The increase in hacking, from keylogging malware to phishing attacks, has made it vital that online financial accounts be able to protect their consumers. At the same time, our research shows that 69 percent of Web users who connect to financial institutions online have at least four or more passwords.
Enter Vidoop’s ImageShield. Instead of making consumers remember a static password, Vidoop uses the human mind’s superior ability to recall pictures. Sites protected with Vidoop present their users with an ever-changing grid of photographs in different categories—cars, boats, cats, flowers, etc. Each image is tied to a one-time sequence of letters, which the user types in like any other password. Only the user will know the correct categories, since automated hacking attacks are not able to interpret images, and the actual letters entered onto the site change with each login.
To provide even more security, Vidoop offers a range of multi-factor authentication options. In addition to the ImageShield, financial institutions can elect to have one-time passwords sent to a user’s cell phone or to have a confirmation by voice phone. With these methods, Vidoop makes sites easier to use and harder to breach.
Furthermore, the cost of deploying stronger authentication has been prohibitive, but Vidoop can lower cost and potentially eliminate it from the equation.
While Vidoop’s authentication solution is licensed per a financial institution’s user base, Vidoop can change authentication from being an overhead cost to a revenue generator by selling the images in the grid to advertisers for product placement. So, instead of seeing a generic flower in the image-grid, consumers might see a bouquet from Flowers.com.
It sounds simple, but it has great potential. For financial institutions willing to share ad revenue, we can provide Vidoop’s strong authentication for free in exchange for sharing revenue from the ad sales. For financial institution sites that choose this option, the advertising version of this model works like this: Vidoop provides the image grid application. The financial institution simply integrates this application with their existing authentication infrastructure. Vidoop supplies the image and advertising content, and they share viewing-related data, such as how often each image was shown or clicked on.
It’s pretty simple, the financial institution keeps its users, and Vidoop provides usable security, stronger authentication, and a better user experience. And with sponsored images the everyday login suddenly becomes a revenue generator and marketing asset.
So where are we today?
Physically, we moved the company to Portland, Oregon, in September to take advantage of a stronger economic environment and talent pool for our company. Our headquarters are now closer to our customers, partners and West coast engineering talent, which will further drive the development of our products and solutions.
As a company, Vidoop has rolled out its platform for financial institutions, and we have also launched a free password manager—myVidoop.com—that is available to anyone on the Web. Like any start-up, we welcome interest from investors, but we are also aggressively marketing our strong authentication to financial institutions and other higher transaction businesses.
Multi-factor authentication shouldn’t come in the form of expensive key fobs, tokens, or USB drives. It should be simple and secure as image recognition, and it should be easy, fun and an opportunity to generate revenue. Vidoop’s authentication solutions finally allow profitable, usable, secure access.
That is a solution everyone can embrace.
Vidoop - www.vidoop.com
