An Australian cybersecurity startup is gaining international attention but claims Australian big business and governments are reluctant to support home-grown talent.
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Chris Drake, the Noosa-based founder of authentication tool CryptoPhoto, is currently in Israel where his photo-matching solution won its category at the Tel Aviv University Innovation Challenge.
Mr Drake is participating in Austrade's Landing Pad program, which provides market-ready Australian startups with access to networking and investment opportunities.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott called in at the Tel Aviv landing pad last week during a visit to receive his honorary doctorate.
"It's good to see Aussies being recognised in Israel – the world's brains bazaar," Mr Abbott said.
Writing for The Spectator, Mr Abbott said the Austrade program was introducing Australian entrepreneurs to the global market.
"Chris Drake should soon be supplying more secure log-in software for billions of bank accounts," Mr Abbott wrote.
"He's there because it's easier to do IT business in Tel Aviv than in his native Noosa. This is globalisation at its best: smart people in some countries helping smart people in other countries so that everyone in all countries can be better off."
Mr Drake said CryptoPhoto was a new high-security way to login to websites which is faster and easier than "outdated methods" like passwords or two-factor authentication.
"It uses a system of photo matching, like the kids' game Snap," he said.
"The photos are an innovative way to perform mutual authentication, a security method which blocks a range of cyber attacks like phishing, social-engineering, fake web sites, insecure Wi-Fi and other problems.
"Importantly, this security invention takes just a couple of seconds to use, which is faster than you can remember and type a password, which it safely replaces."
Mr Drake said winning at Tel Aviv was an honour and great validation for the product.
"Success in the competitive and challenging security market, especially for a startup, depends on more than just technical excellence," he said.
"It needs an ecosystem, adopters and support to survive.
"Tel Aviv is literally where business leaders fly to when they're looking to buy effective cyber solutions, which is why winning this award here is so valuable to us."
Mr Drake said about 400 web sites were using CryptoPhoto, the largest being French hosting service Ikoula and domain registrar Internet.bs.
CryptoPhoto has plugins for popular content management systems including WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.
A trial ran last year with St George Business Banking and Mr Drake said discussions were under way with a multinational bank.
"Our technology is radically different to every other authentication product in the world," Mr Drake said.
"We are the only working solution to problems like social engineering, phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks and rogue websites.
"We also solve about 100 other security and security-reducing usability issues such as lost devices and forgotten passwords."
Mr Drake said there was an "astonishing" market for authentication, but many "junk legacy products" remained popular.
"The Austrade program ends next week and I'll be back in Australia heckling our government and big business for rarely adopting any local technology, and pressing on with international banking pilots we have achieved," he said.
