TWOSENSE.AI receives $2.42M DISA contract for behavioral biometrics

Feb 7, 2019, 12:19 pm EST | Chris Burt

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) of the U.S. Department of Defense has awarded behavioral biometrics provider TWOSENSE.AI a $2.42 million contract to deploy deep neural networks (DNNs) for smartphone and workstation-based continuous multifactor authentication.

The contract was awarded through the Rapid Innovation Fund, and TWOSENSE will work with DISA to create a solution to secure employee identity while improving the usability of secure systems, according to the announcement. TWOSENSE.AI provides a hybrid SaaS product which authenticates users invisibly and continuously according to the way they walk, type, carry a mobile device, or interact with the screen.

“Both DISA and TWOSENSE.AI believe that continuous authentication is the cornerstone of securing identity. Behavior-based authentication is invisible to the user, therefore it can be used continuously without creating any extra work” says Dr. Dawud Gordon, CEO of TWOSENSE.AI.

The project is part of DISA’s Assured Identity initiative, which is expected to eventually replace the Common Access Card (CAC) with physical and behavioral biometrics to provide continuous identity security for the DoD. TWOSENSE.AI says the initiative builds on and leverage existing DISA partnerships with Qualcomm and Samsung.

DISA has been testing multi-biometric systems which include gait recognition for some time, and recently began testing Android devices with Qualcomm hardware.

VentureBeat reports that TWOSENSE.AI, which is based in Brooklyn, New York, has raised $850,000 in funding since being founded in 2014. It also reports that the company’s technology includes ballistocardiography, which creates an image based on user’s muscle movements related to the circulatory system.