About BIO-key International

BIO-key International, Inc. (BIO-key) operates as a leading identity and access management (IAM) platform provider enabling secure work-from-anywhere for enterprise, education, and government customers using secure multi-factor authentication (MFA). The company's products include PortalGuard and PortalGuard Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) enterprise IAM, WEB-key biometric civil and large-scale ID infrastructure, MobileAuth mobile phone authentication application for iOS and Android, and accessory fingerprint scanner and FIDO-compliant hardware to provide a full and complete solution for identity-innovating customers. BIO-key PortalGuard empowers organizations to maximize the power of cloud, mobile and web technologies by securing users' identities and connecting them with the applications they rely on, while keeping cyber-intruders and unauthorized delegates (proxy users) out. Competing MFA solutions require a phone or token for every user authentication use case, but this is expensive and ineffective for workforce users who cannot use a phone in their workplace, or who rove among workstations or share kiosks for access to information systems. BIO-key's exclusive Identity-Bound Biometrics (IBB) authentication methods address this by making biometric identification based available at any end point device, making the user their own credential, not their phone or a token. The company's customers trust BIO-key to secure access to a variety of cloud, mobile and web applications, on-premise and cloud-based hypervisor servers from all of their devices. Employees and contractors sign into BIO-key PortalGuard to seamlessly and securely access the applications needed to do their work, and customers sign into BIO-key PortalGuard to access online services. Organizations use PortalGuard to securely collaborate and communicate with their partners and to provide their customers with flexible, resilient user experiences online and while using mobile devices. PortalGuard can operate standalone as a comprehensive multifactor authentication (MFA), Single Sign On, and Self-Service Password Reset solution, directly authenticating for Windows sign in and application access, or as an upgraded MFA user experience within an enterprise IAM framework, such as Microsoft, Okta, Ping or ForgeRock. BIO-key's WEB-key is a scalable biometric service management platform, incorporating key functions for regulatory compliance, enrollment, authentication or identification, and integrity in a multi-tenant private or public cloud delivery platform. Government agencies use BIO-key for their large-scale civil ID projects, because WEB-key underpins a biometric identity ecosystem, is cloud-ready, and provides a scalable, high-integrity trust platform which can be operated anywhere and supports over 30 fingerprint scanners interchangeably. The company also delivers biometric software integration application programming interfaces, or APIs, allowing software developers to leverage its platform to securely and efficiently embed biometric multi-factor authentication, or MFA, into their own products. This allows software developers to focus on their core functionality while BIO-key ensures users enter the application without requiring them to carry their phone or any token. The company's global identity as a service, or IDaaS, hosting capability allows its customers to simplify and efficiently scale their security infrastructures across internal IT systems and external customer facing applications without installation overhead, security or uptime management efforts. The company designed BIO-key PortalGuard IDaaS and WEB-key to provide organizations an integrated approach to managing and securing all of their identities using the technologies they already use while providing capacity for future needs through the strategic use of biometrics to limit vulnerability and contain authentication costs. The company's platform allows users to authenticate their customers, employees, contractors, and partners. It enables any user to connect to any device, cloud or application, all with a simple, customizable, intuitive and consumer-friendly user experience. The company utilizes server-secured Identity-Bound Biometrics to support roving users without requiring them to carry their phone or a token. As of December 31, 2022, more than 600 customers across multiple industries used BIO-key to secure and manage access for users around the world. The company is developing automated finger identification technology that supplements or compliments other methods of identification and verification, such as personal inspection identification, passwords, tokens, smart cards, ID cards, credit card, passports, driver's licenses, or other form of possession or knowledge-based credentialing. The company's advanced technology and is used to improve both the accuracy and speed of fingerprint biometrics in some of the largest biometric systems in the world. The company owns PistolStar, Inc. (PistolStar). PistolStar provides enterprise-ready identity access management solutions to commercial, government and education customers throughout the United States and internationally. PistolStar develops and markets its PortalGuard line of software and services. On March 8, 2022, the company expanded its sales and support operation into Europe, Africa and the Middle East (EMEA) by acquiring Swivel Secure Europe, SA. Swivel Secure Europe is a Madrid, Spain based provider of IAM solutions serving over 300 customers through a network of dozens of channel partners throughout EMEA. Swivel Secure Europe is the exclusive distributer of AuthControl Sentry, AuthControl Enterprise and AuthControl MSP product line in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, excluding the United Kingdom. Swivel Secure maintains a direct sales force with offices in Madrid, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal. Products BIO-key PortalGuard and PortalGuard IDaaS BIO-key PortalGuard is an independent, customer-controlled and neutral-by-design cloud-based identity platform that allows the company's customers to integrate with any cloud or on-premise SaaS application, service or cloud host, as well as Windows device authentication through a single secure, reliable and scalable IAM platform. It provides identical capabilities in both a SaaS (PortalGuard IDaaS) or on-premise (PortalGuard) delivery model. PortalGuard integrates BIO-key's Identity Bound Biometric (IBB) authentication as what-you-are authentication options that are not tied to a device or 'what you have' authentication, allowing the company's customers to positively identify who is accessing their systems, not the device they might have handed off to another user. The company's three-way IAM neutrality consists of: Seventeen MFA authentication factor choices, including the company's server-secured Identity Bound Biometric (IBB) via fingerprint scanners, or using a palm scan, facial selfie, or voice biometric via its MobileAuth app on a mobile phone; Open user directory choices, including on premise, hybrid or full-Azure Active Directory, LDAP, IBM Domino, or custom SQL user directory; and Multiple single sign on, or SSO, federation options, including SAML, Open ID Connect (OIDC), OAUTH, CAS and WS-Fed. These capabilities allow the company's customers to combine and authenticate legacy and future technologies and to securely connect users to the technology that they choose. The company designs transparent compatibility of the BIO-key PortalGuard IDaaS with on-premise infrastructures and public and hybrid clouds. The company's customers use the BIO-key PortalGuard IDaaS to secure their workforces and student populations and make their partner networks more collaborative. PortalGuard IDaaS provides more and secure experiences for their customers and end users, which enables the company's customers to future-proof their environments. PortalGuard IDaaS can be used as the central system for an organization's connectivity, access, authentication and identity lifecycle management needs across all of its users, technology and applications. The company enables its customers to easily deploy, manage and secure applications and devices, and offer provisioning services using open source tools. Developers can leverage an extensive suite of API and modular SDK tools to build custom cloud, mobile and web application enrollment and authentication experiences that leverage BIO-key PortalGuard and WEB-key as the underlying identity management platform. Once deployed, PortalGuard allows administrators to enforce contextual access management decisions based on conditions, such as user identity, device, geolocation, application destination identity, IP range, and time of day. The company's customers use BIO-key to manage and secure work-related IT access of their employees, contractors and supply chain partners, which it calls workforce identity; and manage and secure the identities of users of their web properties, which it calls customer identity. BIO-key PortalGuard and PortalGuard IDaaS for Workforce Identity: PortalGuard streamlines the way an organization's employees, contractors and supply chain partners connect to its applications and data from any device, while increasing user efficiency, preventing unauthorized delegation, credential sharing, and keeping digital environments secure through the company's MFA capabilities. The company enables organizations to provide their workforces with immediate and secure access to every application from any device they use, without maintaining multiple credentials. The company's multi-directory support interfaces with the directories in place at an organization, while allowing SQL-based custom directories where none presently exist. BIO-key PortalGuard Desktop allows customers to extend the BIO-key PortalGuard IDaaS to their existing on-premises and remote workstation Windows sign in. BIO-key PortalGuard and PortalGuard IDaaS for Customer Identity: BIO-key PortalGuard allows organizations to secure access to their online properties, while upgrading their customers' user experience by delivering self-enrollment and management for customer-facing cloud, mobile or web applications. The company enables an organization's product team to layer BIO-key's MFA, SSO and self-service password reset, or SSPR, functionality into their cloud, web and mobile applications through federation standards or using the company's APIs. The company's customers are able to centrally manage policies, audit and log access across their properties, leading to more seamless customer experiences. BIO-key VST and WEB-key; Products; Civil and Large-Scale ID Infrastructure The company has developed what is the most discriminating and effective commercially available finger-based biometric technology. This technology is embedded in the company's PortalGuard product for enterprise security, providing customers with a unique capability to authenticate users without a phone or token, where appropriate, such as manufacturing, retail, call centers, and health care workers. Other markets for scalable biometric engines include government markets, large scale identity projects, such as voter's registration, driver's license, national ID programs, and SIM card registration. The company also offers a full line of easy to use finger scanners for both enterprise and consumer markets. The company's PIV Pro, SidePass, EcoID II and SideSwipes finger readers can be used on any laptop, tablet or other device which contains a USB A or C port. The company markets and sells these fingerprint scanners through distributors and directly to end users via Amazon. AuthControl Sentry; AuthControl Enterprise; AuthControl MSP Swivel Secure is the exclusive distributer of AuthControl Sentry, AuthControl Enterprise, and AuthControl MSP product line in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, or EMEA, excluding the United Kingdom and Ireland. These solutions include a patented one-time-code extraction technology, helping enterprises manage the increasing data security risks posed by cloud services and bring your own device policies. Fingerprint Readers The company's series of compact fingerprint readers, it from both commercial companies use SidePass, SideSwipe or EcoID II to replace their Windows passwords and enable Windows Hello for Business without replacing or upgrading laptops or tablets. Identity and Access Management, User Multi-Factor Authentication, Single Sign On, Privilege Entitlement and Access Control The company's products simplify the authentication process for enterprise users and consumers, while raising security levels. This allows the company's customers to meet new, stronger authentication requirements and security best practices across many industries, while delivering a superior end-user experience. Customers use the company's products to reduce risk of theft, fraud, loss, account takeover attacks, and unauthorized account sharing by limiting access to valuable assets, privileges, data, services, networks and places to only authorized individuals. The company's products provide stronger identity binding and a superior user experience versus traditional credentialing systems, which utilize a physical or knowledge-based electronic credential to authenticate the holder but fail to authenticate the actual user in addition to the token. Both commercial enterprises and the public sector have seen a shift in the requirement for stronger authentication, and the FBI, NIST and industry thought leaders, such as SalesForce and Microsoft have encouraged entities to enhance their security posture by implementing stronger 2-factor authentication (2FA) or MFA. The market for advanced user MFA, including fingerprint biometrics, extends to nearly every industry segment and the market opportunity for the company's products is massive, global and growing. Markets Historically, the company's largest market has been identity and access management for highly regulated industries like government and healthcare. However, the company is witnessing a change in the landscape as organizations within all industries and of all sizes are embracing biometric technology and MFA as a security and workflow solution. Millions of users have been successfully using biometrics in phones from Apple and Samsung and they welcome the same user experience to access applications without passwords or tokens. The company's acquisition of PistolStar added a large customer base in the state and local government and higher education (SLED) vertical. Colleges and universities throughout the United States use the company's PortalGuard MFA and SSO platform. As governments, colleges and universities continue to operate in remote environments, the company has seen additional demand for its solutions. Marketing and Distribution The company sells its products directly through its field and inside sales teams, as well as indirectly through its network of channel partners. Through its Channel Alliance Program, the company has partnered with more than 40 resellers, system integrators and other distribution partners. The company is committed to continue to aggressively grow this program in 2023. The company partners with leading application, managed service and infrastructure vendors, such as Intelisyss, Insight, NGEN, Amazon Web Services, Pathify, Software House International (SHI), Virtual Graffiti, Atlassian, and ProCirrus. The company offers its software under a SaaS term license and generate annual recurring revenue (ARR) primarily by selling multi-year subscriptions to its software. The company employs a customer success team, focused on customer satisfaction and early remediation. Intellectual Property Rights Patents On December 26, 2006, the company was issued US patent No. 7,155,040 covering its unique image processing technology, which is critical for enhancing information used in the extraction of biometric minutiae. The issued patent protects a critical part of an innovative four-phase image enhancement process developed by the company. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on January 29, 2025. On April 15, 2008, the company was issued US patent No. 7,359,553 covering its image enhancement and data extraction core algorithm components. The solution protected under this patent provides the capability to quickly and accurately transform a fingerprint image into a computer image that can be analyzed to determine the critical data elements. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on January 3, 2025. On November 18, 2008, the company was issued US patent No. 7,454,624 for its 'Match Template Protection within a Biometric Security System' method. The solution protected under this patent limits the scope of enrollment templates usage and also eliminates the need for revocation or encryption processes, which can be expensive and time consuming. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on May 17, 2025. On March 10, 2009, the company was issued US patent No. 7,502,938 for its 'Trusted Biometric Device' which covers a simple, yet secure method of protecting a user's biometric information. It covers the transmission of information from the point the information is collected at the biometric reader until the data reaches the computer or device that is authenticating the user's identity. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on October 25, 2025. On November 8, 2011, the company was issued US Patent No. 8,055,027 for its 'Generation of Directional Information in the Context of Image Processing' method for image enhancement and processing. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on October 10, 2027. On June 5, 2012, PistolStar was issued US Patent No. 8,196,193 for 'Method For Retrofitting Password Enabled Computer Software with a Redirectional User Authentication Method', where a device, method, and system may be used to integrate and control authentication and passwords among various applications and platforms. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on November 1, 2030. On July 3, 2012, the company was issued US Patent No. 8,214,652 for its 'Biometric Identification Network Security', an expanded method of network and related network authentication security systems utilizing hardware-based support for encryption and key management for authentication purposes. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on April 24, 2024. On March 12, 2013, PistolStar was issued US Patent No. 8,397,077 for 'Client Side Authentication Redirection', where user specific attributes may be accessed and used to produce a generated password, using an algorithm and the user attributes. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on August 7, 2030. On May 3, 2017, the company was issued US Patent No. 9,646,146 for its 'Utilization of Biometric Data', a method enables existing small area sensors to capture substantially more fingerprint surface area, leading to a higher degree of accuracy when performing a match. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on March 6, 2035. On June 19, 2018, the company was issued U.S. Patent No. 10,002,244 for its 'Utilization of Biometric Data' to allow continuous, passive user authentication on a mobile device. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on March 6, 2035. On July 27, 2018, the company was issued U.S. Patent No. 10,025,831 for 'Adaptive Short Lists and Acceleration of Biometric Database Search', a method to quickly and iteratively search a database of biometric data. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on August 10, 2036. On September 3, 2019, the company was issued U.S. Patent No. 10,400,481 for 'Fingerprint Lock', a lock design method of the shackle and spring integration to electronics. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on June 27, 2037. On September 10, 2019, the company was issued U.S Patent No. 10,410,040 for 'Fingerprint Lock Control method and Fingerprint Lock System', a lock design method of the control process of scanning, and server communications for user profile management. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on July 26, 2037. On April 20, 2021, the company was issued U.S. Patent No. 10,984,085 for 'Biometric Recognition for Uncontrolled Acquisition Environments', expected to be deployed in mobile devices, the patent provides a method of continuous capture of the users biometric data before the need of the authentication or enrollment, as well as during an active session with a user, to assure the user has not changed. With the payment of all maintenance fees, this patent will expire on March 13, 2039. The company has also been granted parallel patents to the U.S. Patent portfolio to certain of its patents in many foreign countries offering protection of its intellectual property rights around the world. Trademarks The company has registered its trademarks 'BIO-key', 'True User Identification', 'Intelligent Image Indexing', 'WEB-key', 'SideSwipe', 'SidePass', 'EcoID', 'PistolStar', 'PortalGuard', 'MobileAuth', 'PASSIVEKEY' and 'PISTOLSTAR'. With the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, as well as many foreign countries, protecting the company's names and key technology offerings. The company also owns the following unregistered trademarks: PortalGuard Nebula, Password Power and Scooch. Research and Development During the year ended December 31, 2022, the company's research and development expenses were $3,252,236. History The company, a Delaware corporation, was founded in 1993. The company was incorporated in 2004. It was formerly known as SAC Technologies, Inc. and changed its name to BIO-key International, Inc. in 2002.