Behavioral-biometrics company TypingDNA announces that it raised a $7 million Series A round led by Gradient Ventures, Googles AI-focused venture fund. Other participants include EU-based fund GapMinder, Techstars Ventures and other prior investors.

TypingDNA has developed proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms to authenticate users based on how they type. Through a simple training process of watching user keystrokes, TypingDNA can recognize further attempts from a specific user by matching them against their known account.

This technology, known as typing biometrics, will enable existing applications such as authentication, fraud detection, password recovery, and online education assessment to fingerprint users more securely than traditional forms of two-factor authentication.

Advancing the research and distribution of typing biometrics is of global importance. Keyboards are incorporated in almost any device today, making typing behavior the most widely available user biometric. This round of funding will allow us to further our mission to provide user-friendly, non-intrusive biometrics and increased security to people around the world, said Raul Popa, CEO and Co-founder at TypingDNA.

TypingDNAs Authentication API accepts user keystrokes in a standardized and open-sourced format allowing simple and easy integration into any desktop or mobile application.

Developers can implement TypingDNAs API as a passive two-factor authentication option, password recovery method, or simply to ensure inputs are matched to a given user. TypingDNAs mobile developer SDK also currently supports the latest version of iOS and Android applications.

TypingDNA is currently ACE compliant for verifying students online, and European Banking Authority considers typing biometrics to be compliant for SCA regulation (2FA in banking and payments in EU), as a consequence the company is experiencing great demand from the industry.

TypingDNA plans to use this new investment to expand its developer support network and offer more tools to integrate their API with existing website development platforms.

Were excited about TypingDNAs developer-first approach to enable people to authenticate securely based on how they type, said Darian Shirazi, General Partner at Gradient Ventures.

With global regulation impacting face-recognition-based authentication and hackers targeting SMS-based two-factor authentication, typing biometrics is the best form of identifying people without compromising privacy or security.

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TypingDNA raises $7 million to advance the research and distribution of typing biometrics - Help Net Security