CyberLocator uses GPS technology to strengthen computer user security

Business Report Correspondent

BOULDER ? Imagine the end of hacking while keeping all computer-based data completely secure.

If you head up a military installation, a business with highly competitive products or ideas or a scientific laboratory with sensitive information, that picture will have you clicking your heels.

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According the Boulder-based CyberLocator Inc., this concept of impenetrable security may be possible.

CyberLocator holds the patents for a Global Positioning System

(GPS) application that determines computer-user locations and time of access, a location signature. Its technology allows network security to add a third parameter of physical location to name and password in security systems to authenticate a user. CyberLocator technology also enables vendors, like casino operators, to determine the location of a particular user.

Paul Siegel, CyberLocator’s vice president of business development, said the company’s technology observes the U.S. government’s 27 global positioning satellites in real time and compiles the satellite observations into a location signature. “By combining the satellite signals, which are constantly moving, with the physical location of the user, CyberLocator creates a unique location signature that is impossible to predict or forge,” Siegel said.

Users wanting access to a system protected by CyberLocator technology enter their location signature into a target server. The server uses its own location signature plus the user’s to create a three-dimensional offset vector and time stamp that identifies the user in relation to the server. The result is compared to a database of authorized locations for the user and if valid, the user is granted access.

“In addition to network and Internet security, another application of CcyberLocator’s technology is gambling,” Siegel said. A subsidiary of CyberLocator, Global Cyber Licensing, has a major Nevada casino as its first client.

The casino is initiating sports betting on the Internet and must prove to the state of Nevada that it can grant Web site access only to a user who is physically located in Nevada, since sports betting would be illegal elsewhere.

“CyberLocator can create a circle of authentication for an office, a building, a street or an entire state such as Nevada or Colorado or both,” Siegel said. “Other methods would be defeated.”

Another application for CyberLocator is satellite transmission to remote locations, such as from an ATM back to the home bank. GPS records at each ATM are secure without anyone being able to hack in and change numbers in the transaction.

“SAIC, one of the largest security technology firms in the world, will be our development partner working on the casino project, the bank project and others,” Siegel said. SAIC also will be involved with a foreign military client who wants GPS receivers installed in the equipment of every field soldier in its army to reduce the casualties from “friendly fire.”

“Another location-based application we are working on is GPS receivers in cell phones or PDAs so another user can send you something related to where you are. It could be something as simple as a coupon only good at a certain MacDonalds in the neighborhood where you happen to be,” Siegel said.

Related to that application is the codeless GPS, which turns a cell phone into a GPS receiver without the added bulk typical of current GPS cell phones on the market.

“Think of it like a modem when they first came out. You had to attach it to a computer. When built-in modems became possible, you could send e-mail from any remote location. With a codeless GPS in a cell phone, you can make and receive calls from anywhere without interruption,” Siegel said.

Peter MacDoran, professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is CyberLocator’s founder and director. He was a fellow at NASA, earning the agency’s highest awards both in science and engineering. Prior to NASA, MacDoran researched interplanetary navigation and applied outer space solutions to Earth-based problems for 14 years at the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Chief Executive Officer Bill White has the business management expertise at CyberLocator. “Before Bill came in July 1999, the company was an organization of scientists and engineers. He helped us establish a focus and revise our business plan,” Siegel said.