Sydney-based biometric identity start-up, Daltrey, has announced it has $1.5 million in seed funding, including a substantial contribution led by serial entrepreneur and investor Roger Allen. The investment will be used to launch an industry-first security solution that provides a unified biometric credential enabling authentication across all physical and logical access points.
Roger Allen is a renowned investor in early stage growth companies in Australia. He is known for founding Allen & Buckeridge, one of the first Australian technology VC’s, and the Computer Power Group, one of the first global technology computer companies founded in Australia. Along with many prestigious industry accolades, Allen was awarded the Order of Australia for services to the IT & VC sectors in 2011.
“I invested because I believe Biometric technologies are the future direction of identity authentication, which is a huge growing issue in a space where the technology is rapidly evolving,” says Allen. “Daltrey offers best-in-class biometric technology rather than any one method and has created a next-generation digital ID that provides organisations with seamless physical and logical authentication control at an enterprise level, rather than on a multitude of individual devices.”
“Using biometric technology, we are building the future of workforce identity access management for government and enterprise,” says Blair Crawford, co-founder and managing director of Daltrey.
“Securing this funding demonstrates confidence in Daltrey and sets the foundation for success,” he says.
Industry-first features of Daltrey’s biometric identity solution include:
- A robust identity establishment process that creates a verified biometric credential known as a DaltreyID. This can be done remotely by users or onsite with an operator either overseeing or managing the onboarding.
- An intelligent middleware platform that integrates with existing access management providers. This means for the first time ever, organisations can use a single credential to authenticate its users across both physical and logical access scenarios.
- Customisable biometric components including face, iris, voice and fingerprints that allow for adaptive authentication, customised to suit the risk level of all access scenarios.
Identity management that can be either user- or enterprise-managed, with world-leading security, privacy and compliance practices in place.
“We have seen the emphasis on data security, authorisation and access management dramatically increase within government and other industry sectors such as healthcare, banking and transportation.” says Crawford.
“However, traditional authentication methods associated with authorisation and access is invariably clumsy, disconnected and can differ across different parts of an organisation.
“Multi-factor authentication is a start, but it doesn’t address the fact that the foundational component of a user’s ID is a username and password in a digital context, or an access card in a physical one; both methods posing undue risk and exposure from a regulatory compliance and security perspective.
“More critically, digital and physical ID convergence objectives are not being effectively addressed. Authenticating to a physical or logical system by way of the same means is an industry wide pain point and is a significantly underserved problem.
“Our vision is to eliminate credential theft by enabling workplaces where usernames, passwords, access cards and PIN numbers no longer exist. We bridge the gap between disparate physical and logical identity management practices and provide business leaders with the ability to manage who, what, when and where people access any location or application across their whole operation.”
