Tech4Trust awards four cybersecurity startups

Tech4Trust is a 4-month acceleration program for companies developing innovative solutions to improve trust within information technologies. It is the first step of a broader, high impact initiative led by Canton de Vaud, academic institutions and leading corporations to promote and connect all actors active in digital trust and cybersecurity, at national level. 

Last Wednesday, at the Tech4Trust Winter Conference - the closing event of the program held in Lausanne four start-ups have been awarded for their exceptional development during the 4 months.

Decentriq is a Zurich-based startup enabling businesses to identify analytics potential in datasets without having access to the data. It provides a privacy-preserving way of calculating the overlap between the desired characteristics of a dataset and the actual data.

NextDay.Vision is based near Basel and offers the user to replace passwords by authenticating in a simple, efficient and secure way on a multitude of services using a security key, the user’s face or a phone.

OneVisage is a startup from Lausanne proposing 3 software development kits that bring one or multiple concurrent factors, including 3D facial biometry (who I am), 3D graphical authentication (what I know) and Premier ID that mixes multiple factors. 

The startups received CHF 3’000.- from the Canton de Vaud. The 3 winners were also awarded a 3-month access to workspaces from the International Workplace Group (IWG), and an invitation to present their companies on the main stage at the Swiss Cyber Security Days in Fribourg on the 12th of February 2020. 

A special prize awarded to an innovative solution for social & societal problems

The Herbert & Audrey Rosenfield Innovation Prize also awarded CHF 5’000.- to the startup Veintree from Sierre (VS) for their contribution to the field of humanitarian aid and significant achievements during the program. Veintree extends portable QR and barcode readers with a “biometrical IR video reader” add-on, allowing anonymous and GDPR compliant registration of human venous networks.

In total, the Tech4Trust events gathered more than 500 trust- and cyber- enthusiasts and professionals all over Switzerland. The next edition of Tech4Trust Acceleration Program will take place this fall.

Tech4Trust is part of a series of vertical acceleration programs offered by La Forge, the EPFL Innovation Park’s incubator. The program stems from a broader initiative from academic institutions EPFL, HEIG-VD, UNIL and the Canton de Vaud through the SPEI, involving leading corporations such as ELCA, Kudelski, SICPA and other actors active in the sphere of digital trust and cybersecurity. The goal of this initiative, which will be fully implemented in 2020, is be to promote and connect all actors active in digital trust and cybersecurity.