Oculis Labs in Hunt Valley, developers of information security technologies, has been recognized by two major organizations as a leader in innovation. The company was listed in April by fundedIDEAS as one of its "Top 300 Startups". The company was also honored in May at the TEDCO ICE Awards with the Innovation award.
Oculis Labs offers two information security products. Privateeye, designed for general use in offices where information may need to be kept confidential, uses facial recognition screen lock technology to keep documents secure to a machine's registered user. It can be used on laptops and desktops, and uses the computer's camera to establish the identity of acceptable readers for a protected document. When an unauthorized person comes into the camera's view, the screen blurs to protect the information. Privateeye can be used to protect confidential information by health clinics, financial institutions, or in other industries where confidentiality is a concern.
"This takes the user out of the security equation. It's very effective with proprietary and personal data," says Oculis Labs CEO Bill Anderson.
Chameleon, Oculis' most advanced security tool, is designed for use by people working with highly sensitive documents, especially in the intelligence and military sectors. The technology works similarly to the Privateeye program, but provides a few additional safety features. Using a special plug-in box for each machine, Chameleon tracks the gaze of the person reading the document, and scrambles the information ahead and behind the reader's view, allowing only what the registered user is looking at currently to be readable. Nonsense words appear in place of the protected data.
"We protect the last 2 feet of the internet," Anderson says. "There's security available for the rest of it, but this protects your data once it hits your screen."
Writer: Amy McNeal
Source: Bill Anderson, Oculis Labs