We founded Hanko with a clear mission:
"Enabling developers to implement and run strong passwordless authentication."
That is what drives us everyday.
Our name "Hanko" is inspired by little stamps that are used in Japan and Korea for putting your signature on a document. Passwordless authentication is also based on (digital) signatures, so we find the name to be quite fitting.
"We make passwords obsolete!" – That was our masterplan when we started working on Hanko as a side project. A quick analysis showed that all existing authentication solutions either still relied on passwords as the first authentication factor or have other weaknesses. There must be a better solution...
The first prototypes of Hanko Authenticator App were developed and were able to prove that our concept of passwordless authentication works. First pilot customers were found quickly. We founded Hanko GmbH and joined the FIDO Alliance right from the start.
We participated at the FIDO Alliance certification event in Lisbon and passed all certification tests with our Hanko FIDO2 Server. The final product was getting more and more polished and the need for an on-demand FIDO solution was verified. We were also able to find first investors that share our vision of a passwordless internet.
Hanko FIDO Server and Hanko Authentication API are ready to make convenient and secure passwordless authentication with WebAuthn and FIDO2 as easy as 1-2-3.