Nymi, which has been working for years to bring a heartbeat-driven identity band to market, has brought in a new CEO and board member to drive enterprise adoption of its product.
John Haggard, the new CEO, comes from Yubico, which makes two-factor authentication keys and related software; Haggard was Chief Business Officer there. The new board member is Ram Varadarajan, who was the founder of Arcot Systems, a cloud-based authentication company acquired by CA Technologies. Karl Martin, who was a founder of Nymi and was CEO, will become chief technical officer; the announcement of the new appointments made a point of saying that Martin “led the recruitment” of Haggard.
Nymi’s other founder, Andrew D’Souza, left the company in February, his LinkedIn profile says.
Nymi’s core product is the Nymi Band, an authentication device that uses biometrics — specifically, a heartbeat pattern — to confirm a wearer’s identity, and runs on NFC and Bluetooth platforms. Although the company has successfully raised millions of dollars and garnered lots of media attention, the product has yet to gain traction in the market. Developers first got their samples almost exactly a year ago, and the first commercial transaction using a Nymi Band happened in August. Haggard, a statement from the company said, will focus on delivering product into the enterprise market — perhaps an acknowledgement that the need for strong authentication is limited in the consumer market, even as NFC becomes steadily more popular.