A Balance of Security and Convenience V-Key

“Our mission is to provide complete mobile application security for any mobile application on any Smartphone without additional hardware.”

Smartphones are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our lives, with 30% of the world’s population owning a Smartphone. Usage of mobile banking, mobile payments, mobile-capable government services and mobile enterprise workforce enablement has grown equally rapidly. Current security measures comprising a mixture of hardware and SMS-based authentication, present significant challenges. Clearly, there is a growing need for higher standards of mobile security, delivered for all mobile devices ubiquitously, along with a refinement of user experience across a wide range of user touch points and usage scenarios.

Singapore based V-Key’s pioneering products and services were created to meet these emerging challenges. Founded 2011, the company’s vision is to have V-OS Virtual Secure Element secure every mobile application in the world.

V-Key’s solutions offer long-awaited answers to today’s mobile cybersecurity needs

Secure Multi-Factor Authentication: Traditional security methods such as passwords are under increased stress due to online attacks and users’ continued usage of weak passwords or sharing of passwords across multiple online devices.

Protecting Payments: Cloud-Based Payments make use of tokenized credit card keys and other fraud detection mechanisms to mitigate the security risks of a purely software-based mobile security approach.

Protecting identity and personal / application data: Today, banks, governments, and enterprises are looking to fortify mobile security measures and protect data such as Personal Identifiable Information (PII) from security lapses and attacks.

Sneak Peek at the Solutions Offered

There is the increasingly common usage of smartphones for mobile banking, mobile payments, and accessing government services and enabling a mobile workforce, all of which require secure mobile authentication and authorization. This puts more pressure than ever on service providers and enterprises to find mobile security measures that can secure sensitive data during these transactions and interactions.

The company’s groundbreaking products offer banking and government-grade security, alongside convenience and ease of use for anyone with any level of familiarity with digital security systems.

Smart security solutions for a smart, connected nation:

V-Key is at the forefront of solving some of the issues governments face in creating digital identities for a smart nation.

New technologies such as V-OS Authentication Management, which is built on top of V-OS Virtual Secure Element equals or betters smart chip security specifications and hard tokens, and offers robust protection. This includes multi-layered protection against advanced threats targeting mobile applications.

This means the protocols for verification of the user’s digital identity are as secure as those for services that require strong authentication such as financial transactions. The solution, which works on both iOS and Android devices, adds another layer of security for government organizations wishing to allow Smartphone users to transact on-the-go, conveniently and with one secure application.

Secure, easy-to-use, cost-effective mobile banking solutions: V-Key has developed the world’s first virtual secure element: V-OS, which matches or improves on the security characteristics of hardware, secure elements for cryptographic storage, processing and verification of user credentials, and multi-factor authentication of transactions.

V-OS has been the subject of multiple rigorous penetrations and stress tests by e-commerce players, government agencies, regulatory bodies and FinTech companies including Ant Financial Services Group. It has yet to be compromised, and in fact, meets or exceeds standards previously reserved for hardware security solutions. As a result, V-OS provides a compelling frictionless solution for digital banking applications.

CIOs and development teams should be aware that V-OS comes with a flexible and extensible software development kit (SDK) framework incorporating individualization and personalization capabilities for easy integration and securing of your mobile applications. V-OS can leverage an existing authentication server infrastructure or - with its PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) solution, which provides multiple additional benefits - replace it. Either way, deployment can be achieved at a fraction of the cost of existing hardware solutions.

In addition, once deployed V-Key solution provides Over-The-Air (OTA) updates, enabling on-going threat detection and incremental updates to the core V-OS functionality. This includes dynamic provisioning of personalized keys and cryptographic protections to ensure the highest levels of security.

Data and messaging security that’s easy to integrate, implement and maintain:

At V-Key we have solutions that can solve the security challenge in relation to access control at both the device and system levels, such as company-wide VPN. Multiple use cases can be secured in one app.

V-Key’s solutions can be integrated with existing hardware infrastructure and authentication servers. In partnership with others, we are able to provide security solutions for physical access to premises, security for VPN access, or security for Single Sign-On (SSO) for access to enterprise servers.

Whereas traditional white box cryptography can typically be penetrated within days, V-OS has demonstrably been able to pass more than nine penetration tests. Requesting organizations include Ant Financial, its investor, as well as customers who managed pen tests as part of rolling out the solution.

The Prime Product

The V-OS Trust Platform

The products in the V-OS Trust Platform are built on the core foundation: the V-OS Virtual Secure Element. Its unique, patented architecture allows mobilization of use cases in Identity, Authentication, Authorization, and Protection.

These building blocks can be used on their own to solve specific banking, government, and enterprise challenges - or can be combined to empower your next-generation digital strategy.

Greet the Leader

Joseph Gan, Co-Founder, and President: Joseph is a digital security pioneer who holds multiple patents. Prior to founding V-Key, he was Lab Head at the Cryptography LabCentre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies (CSIT); R&D Manager at D’Crypt Pte Ltd; and IT Coordinating Officer for OCS Singapore Armed Forces. He designed the core technology which forms the basis for V-Key’s product suite.

“We want to make possible a secure digital world where the mobile application is often the primary channel for mobile authentication, interaction, and transactions.”