German Biometrics Company BioID Collaborates with A-Trust

Nürnberg, Germany, November 14, 2016 --(PR.com)-- With the new EU eIDAS regulation that went into effect on July 1, especially in Germany, the demand is extremely high for a secure signature solution that is valid across the EU. For this reason BioID, the developer of biometric face recognition software located in Nürnberg, is expanding its marketing position by collaborating with A-Trust, a qualified trust service provider from Vienna.

The declared goal of the EU regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market – in short eIDAS – is to simplify electronic transactions across the EU between citizens, government authorities and companies. Corresponding solutions, such as the mobile phone-based digital signature solution Handy-Signatur from A-Trust, immediately make digital everyday business for companies and administration EU-wide more independent and, above all, more secure.

The company BioID, a developer of biometric face recognition with a global customer base, and A-Trust were convinced of solutions based on the especially secure identification and authentication data storage from A-Trust in Vienna. It guarantees a basis of trust for digital identification of persons across Europe.

Strategic cooperation addresses industry needs

Through the combination of Handy-Signatur and biometric face recognition, the physical user is perfectly linked to a mobile device, addressing emerging online applications for business and industry. Ho Chang, BioID CEO, sees applications that are eagerly waiting for such a strong combination, above all in transaction authorization (e.g. eSigning, online payments), and IAM, especially for e-commerce, banking and insurance, and even in physical access control.

“For us, the partnership with A-Trust was an obvious choice, because they operate at the highest levels of security. BioID requires the strictest security standards, and naturally we also require this of our partners. A-Trust has the most secure technology available on the European market and has decades of experience in the implementation of the Handy-Signatur in corporate and government segments. This wealth of experience helps to further strengthen our position in the German-speaking market,” Chang elaborated.

Face recognition with the Handy-Signatur app

Through the cooperation of A-Trust and BioID, two secure authentication technologies – Handy-Signatur and biometric face recognition – are combined. The first practical application of the two security features can be seen in the Handy-Signatur app. Up until now, the human factor was missing, the app required the smartphone to be protected with an additional factor such as a PIN, pattern or fingerprint.

In a first step, users of the iOS version of the app have the possibility to replace this additional protection with a simple look in the camera. The BioID facial recognition software addresses the highest level of assurance, namely “user presence,” in all authentication and authorization applications with its patented liveness detection, and thus provides strong protection against photo and video attacks. Naturally, the required two-factor authentication for signatures or for authentication via Handy-Signatur remains for security reasons.

Handy-Signatur app: even easier and more secure.

“We are pleased with the strategic cooperation with BioID, in particular because we both share a common goal: security and usability must be equally valued. With a biometric approach we are responding to the needs of our users, who want to navigate the web with minimum barriers and maximum security,” stated A-Trust CEO Michael Butz. “The Handy-Signatur app is particularly loved by iPhone users, thus we decided to begin with iOS. An implementation for Android is planned for late 2016.”