Steven Bender

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Steven Bender is a serial entrepreneur and founder of both Altamira Group (Genuine Fractals) and iMagic Software (typing pattern recognition). Steven's contribributions to digital imaging made the lives of a million-plus Photoshop professionals easier, and his contributions to authentication are today helping make distributed systems both safer and easier to use by turning passwords into a strong biometric akin to fingerprints. Some of the most influential Analysts in Information Technology have weighed in, like Rob Enderle [1] of the Enderle Group who commented in January 2007 that this new technology is, "a compelling solution in a world where identity theft and illegal access are the greatest growing threats to a business or family"

Steven's, and co-founder Howard Postley's, patent-pending system is based on muscle memory. It turns out that people do have reliable patterns hidden inside the simple act of typing a password. By using these patterns, it is possible to be distringuish the real user from imposters. This can be done over the internet and is a significant breakthrough in biometrics and computer security. This is an extension of the science often called Keystroke Dynamics and is the subject of much interest. A recent article from Science News has a good background - [2].

In the 90s Steven developed Genuine Fractals at Altamira Group. Genuine Fractals was a plug-in for Photoshop and, for the first time, allowed images to go completely resolution independent -- meaning a single image could be scaled from postage stamp to IMAX without loss of quality. Genuine Fractals won Best Product of the Year (EDDY) from Macworld Magazine in 1997 & 1998 [1], sold more than 1 million copies, and became the industry standard. Genuine Fractals was a seminal product in digital imaging, had a huge impact on workflow for graphics professionals and the advertising industry in general, and is still the gold-standard today.

References:

• [3] -- "Key Sequence Rhythms" patent application.

• [4] -- The Enderle Group, one of the leading IT think-tanks.

• [5] -- MacWorld 1997 EDDY winners, Genuine Fractals wins Best Graphics Plug-in. Notable also because Genuine Fractals was the first product developed on PC and ported to Mac to win an EDDY

• [6] -- Steven Bender Bio, iMagic Software website, enterprise software vendor specializing in human authentication via typing rhythms.

• [7] -- Description of Trustable Passwords from CA.com, formerly Computer Associates

• [8] -- The importance of a biometric logon, from the Candid CIO blog

• [9] -- Article on the founding of iMagic Software and the first customer, Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara, from the Santa Barbara News Press, cover article.

• [10] -- Description of Genuine Fractals features and importance

• [11] -- Genuine Fractals from Adobe.com