OneID, the next-generation in digital identity, today announced it has raised $7 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners.
OneID was founded in 2011 by Steve Kirsch, Silicon Valley technology visionary and serial entrepreneur to help consumers eliminate the need for multiple usernames and passwords and help online businesses reduce the friction, fraud and costs associated with authentication and financial transactions. With the new funding, OneID will focus on bringing the OneID service to market for use by identity providers, ecommerce businesses, enterprises, governments and individuals.
"Today's investment culminates a year of work by our executive in residence, Alex Doll, to investigate innovative approaches to address the digital identity problem. His experience building successful companies, combined with founder Steve Kirsch's vision gives us great confidence"
"Today's investment culminates a year of work by our executive in residence, Alex Doll, to investigate innovative approaches to address the digital identity problem. His experience building successful companies, combined with founder Steve Kirsch's vision gives us great confidence," said Vinod Khosla, Founder of Khosla Ventures. "We're looking forward to seeing leading sites adopt the OneID service and make it available to millions of customers this year. We believe OneID will attract the most forward-thinking businesses to offer a more secure alternative to the way we sign in to sites and share personal information."
Why the Time is Right for OneID
Today the problems associated with digital identity and authentication affect everyone. For consumers, they are expected to manage dozens, even hundreds, of usernames and passwords for online services, forcing many to use the same username and password across multiple sites. This can be problematic, considering recent cyber attacks where thousands of digital identities were compromised, leaving them vulnerable to identity theft. For online businesses, as more consumers shop online, the IT costs associated with authentication and financial transactions such as lost password recovery, liability from credit card theft and chargebacks have continued to skyrocket, putting additional pressure on online merchants.
With OneID, both consumers and online businesses will benefit from a highly secure digital identity system without sacrificing convenience. The company's unique combination of advanced asymmetric cryptography, the ubiquity of mobile devices and a unique distributed architecture provide protection from sophisticated online security threats. For consumers, they will no longer need to remember multiple usernames and passwords and will have firm control of their personal, financial and credit card information. For online businesses, OneID provides a convenient, secure, and cost-effective digital solution to the authentication problem.
"Existing efforts to solve the huge digital identity problem haven't significantly reduced the frequency of security breaches or identity theft," said Jonathan Heiliger, General Partner, North Bridge. "OneID envisioned a world where people use PCs and mobile devices interchangeably and built a modern identity platform for accessing the web."
OneID Appoints New CEO and New Board Members
The company appointed Alex Doll, former executive at PGP Corp., as CEO to guide the company's growth. Mr. Doll was instrumental in scaling PGP Corp. from inception to global industry leader in trusted data protection. OneID founder Steve Kirsch will move into the role of CTO, focusing on the development of the OneID service, and remain on the company's board of directors. In addition, Shirish Sathaye, general partner at Khosla Ventures and Jonathan Heiliger have joined the OneID board of directors.
"With backing from leading VC firms and a solid leadership and technology team, the time is now for OneID's innovative user-centric approach to tackling one of the biggest security challenges today," said Alex Doll, CEO, OneID. "I'm excited to unleash for consumers and businesses the power of a next-generation digital identity service."
The OneID digital identity service is currently available for developers.