The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of Science and Technology Directorate’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) has granted award money $197,292 to Factom. Inc. based in Austin, Texas.
The award is a performance-based contractual reward for developing a digital identity security solutions based on cross-blockchain technology to trace and curb the falsification and counterfeiting of certificates and licenses.
The award is said to be the second in the row after 2016, which was awarded for deploying blockchain for secure storage of data against tampering, spoofing, or destroying. The data was collected by digital sensors and cameras of the Border Patrol Force of the US.
Both the awards are granted for innovation in blockchain-based identity solutions. The first award was granted for building blockchain technology, which was further commercialized for Harmony connect and the second one will be utilized for Harmony integration.
S&T’s Award strategy
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S&T provides funds to private companies, which are into R&D for providing advanced security solutions. The funds as huge as $800,000 are granted through its SVIP program for security tools development for the participant companies. These funds are non-dilutive and divided into four phases, which strictly are meant for building security solutions for homeland based use cases.
Phase one is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2020, which will be completed further in three phases summing up the award money of $800,000.
Factom. Inc.
Factom. Inc. has been involved actively in developing IoT (Internet of things) security technology. They have even innovated an Off-blocks mobile application that can identify original mobile owners in mobile stealing cases.
In the advanced phases, Factom will deploy this blockchain-based identity technology that will support the credentials of individuals. This will be helpful to evade form vendor lock-ins and interoperability between various blockchains in various systems.
Official Statement from S&T Director
Anil John, Technical Director of S&T, commented,
Data-centric blockchains that can work with any type of data are useful in enterprise contexts such as those of US Customs and Borders Protection for understanding the origin of raw material imports.
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He further added,
Factom is addressing this business and technical problem in a manner that supports global interoperability by adapting their existing Harmony products to support emerging World Wide Web Consortium global standards such as decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials.
