Invisible multi-factor authentication (MFA) provider Beyond Identity announced a $100 million Series C funding round to expand research and development and expand the company’s footprint and resources in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions.
The round raises the company’s total funding to date to $205 million. Evolution Equity Partners led way with existing investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Jim Clark participating. Potentum Partners, Expanding Capital, and HBAM joined the round.
Additionally, Taher Elgamal, “Father of SSL” and 2019 Marconi Award winner of Evolution Equity Partners, will join the Beyond Identity Board of Directors.
Few, if any, disagree that passwords, the root cause of more than 80 percent of breaches, need to go away. But every day brings evidence that well-intentioned talk is cheap, and the cost of waiting – or half-solutions – is becoming more expensive.
From easily phishable MFA and an abundance of malicious toolkits that can intercept 2FA codes to government warnings regarding millions of compromised accounts leading directly to ransomware and account takeover attacks, it has become clear that companies must act. In their report on emerging technologies and trends for 2022, industry watcher Gartner designated passwordless multi-factor authentication as a critical technology for “ubiquitous and transparent security” that should be adopted as soon as possible.
Beyond Identity is leading the charge with a state-of-the-art MFA solution that cryptographically binds a user’s identity to their devices. The system uses public/private key technology and X.509 certificates, completely removing passwords from the authentication and account recovery process instead of obscuring them. The core architecture combined with the company’s authenticator and policy engine ensures that only authorized users and authorized devices are granted access and that every device complies with security policies before and after the authentication process.
