New WBA member LEVL focuses on device identity. It offers a privacy-friendly method of device identity as a replacement for the MAC address. Device identity is used for a variety of network services and also enhances Wi-Fi sensing and authentication. Learn more about LEVL by visiting their official website.
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Colleran, VP Of Business Development and Ecosystem at LEVL, to learn more about the company and their goals.
Can you tell us a little bit about LEVL and your work in the wireless/Wi-Fi industry?
LEVL was founded by Daniel Zahavi and Michael Estrin in late 2017 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA with technical offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. Our focus is on device intelligence and identity, but with a consumer privacy-friendly approach. We just announced a new technology called “LEVL-ID” which allows provides the capability to uniquely identify a device on a network without compromising user privacy or convenience. We can also provide a lot of intelligence as to what the device is and who makes it. Device identify is used throughout many networks for personalization of services, convenience, network optimization, technical support and authorization. LEVL is unique in the industry in that we take a full stack approach to device identity. We are pulling information from all of the layers of the network stack to establish a device’s identity. The technology can be used in the home, in the enterprise, or pretty much any where Wi-Fi is used. Additionally we are coupling our ability to identity a device with other wi-fi sensing capabilities to bring some really novel services to the market.
Device identity is a key focus area for LEVL. What are some challenges currently facing this space, and how does LEVL address them?
Device identity is a key area of focus for us. For many years, the MAC address has been used as the most common form of device identity. It worked well and was a universal single number that could ID a device. Over the years the industry found a lot of innovative ways to leverage the MAC address. For example, parental controls are pretty much all implemented using the MAC address as a device identifier. However, over the years the MAC address has also been used to track people, collected for advertising persons and uses in other malicious ways by bad actors. Essentially a useful piece of technology was being broadly used to compromise user privacy.
As a result, starting about 7 years ago, OS vendors and device makers started to obfuscate the MAC address. This has accelerated in the last few years with more and more aggressive randomization of the MAC address. While this is a big step forward for user privacy, it has been a series of setbacks for the many network service that relies on a device identity. It is expected that the OS and device makers will continue on the path towards more privacy, so as an industry, we need solution in the near future. It needs to be robust, cost effective and easy to deploy, without a lot of dependency on the user.
So the big challenge looking forward is how to maintain the gains in user privacy without losing all of the benefits of a device identifier. The LEVL-ID is designed specifically for that job. It is derived and lives in the network, not on the device, so it is much harder to compromise. It can be configured to be network specific and not a global identifier that has a high value to compromise. Plus, the use of physical layer data makes it much more future proof against changes at the device or OS level. Finally, because it resides in the network and not on the device, no user action is required to make it work and that makes for a much easier deployment and offer the best in class user experience.
How has LEVL navigated the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and how is 2021 looking for the company?
It is heartbreaking to see friends, family and colleagues negatively affected by the pandemic. For LEVL, it has certainly been an interesting year. On one hand, it has made business more difficult in a lot of ways. Startups rely on the ability to get in front of potential customers to really learn pain points and how they can solve them. That is just harder in the covid era. Our team is split between Israel and North America so communications has also been a bit more difficult without any travel. Raising a funding round, all via video conference, was also a new thing to go through and presented its own challenges. On the other hand, we have some new and different opportunities in the work-from-home space that the technology should be a real enabler. 2021 is shaping up to be a year of many firsts with commercial deployments in several markets and a few new product applications as well.
What are your goals as a new member of WBA, and what do you ultimately hope to get out of your membership?
The WBA has a lot to offer to any startup in the WiFi space. Throughout the years a number of us have been involved with the WBA at various levels. These prior experiences demonstrate that the interactions can be very positive. Our goals are to interact with the people and the industry to understand where we best fit in and how our technology can be used for the greatest good. The organization has a lot to offer and we hope to get the learning, the connections and the visibility that the WBA can provide to members. Our goal is also to donate from our knowledge and expertise in the device identity space and help the organization in creating the best device intelligence and identity solutions for the industry.
