Addison-based cybersecurity innovator Amera IoT has announced what it calls “a major breakthrough in quantum-proof encryption” with the launch of AmeraKey Encryption. The patented technology is designed to secure digital communications against both current and future computing threats, including quantum computing, the company said.

CTO Tony Valentino

As Dallas Innovates noted in July, Amera IoT has been racking up patents for its tech since its founding in February 2020. The company says AmeraKey Encryption is protected by “14 issued and granted U.S. patents” covering quantum-proof key generation, transmission-free encryption, entropy creation, and one-time-pad–based secure communications. 

A key difference in AmeraKey’s approach? Unlike traditional encryption systems that rely on computational difficulty—which can be compromised by advances in classical or quantum computing—Amera IoT says AmeraKey is designed so that encryption strength “doesn’t depend on increasing processing power.”

Instead, the solution leverages a patented method using a “Picture and PIN combination” to generate high-quality entropy, enabling both sides of a communication channel to independently and simultaneously generate identical encryption keys.

“For decades, cybersecurity has been a race against ever-more powerful computers,” Tony Valentino, CTO of Amera IoT, said in a statement. “AmeraKey Encryption fundamentally changes that equation. Our patented approach enables quantum-proof security by removing the need to transmit keys or ciphertext at all, providing protection that does not degrade as computing power evolves.”

Quantum computing poses challenges for cybersecurity

Valentino told Dallas Innovates that quantum computing “is very close to breaking current encryption technologies.”

“Advances in quantum computing are occurring more rapidly than originally anticipated,” he adde via email. “What was once thought that sufficient quantum computing technology to break encryption would happen by 2035, is now projected to happen by 2028.”

“The danger today lies in the ability of hackers to harvest data now, for decryption later,” he noted. “So data that was once thought to be protected through 2035, is now only protected until 2028.  In addition, many of the techniques used to provide quantum resistance are expensive to implement and are not suitable for some applications such as the Internet of Things.”

While numerous advances are being developed in encryption technologies to make them quantum resistant, Valentino has doubts about them.

 “The fundamental flaw in these advances is that they’re all based on a mathematical model whose equations are thought to be difficult if not impossible to solve,” he said. “However, given the advances in quantum technologies, algorithms are being developed to solve those equations, making today’s quantum resistant technologies vulnerable in the future.”

AmeraKey said to eliminate ‘entire classes’ of decription attacks

Another critical difference in Amera IoT’s technology, the company says,is that AmeraKey’s encryption key itself is never transmitted, and in certain implementations, even the ciphertext isn’t transmitted—”eliminating entire classes of interception, harvesting, and future decryption attacks.” This architectural approach enables long-term data protection that remains secure “even as quantum computing capabilities advance.”

“Amera provides a quantum proof solution by never exposing, transmitting, or storing the encryption keys,” Valentino said. “The keys are generated locally and independently by both the sender and receiver. In addition, Amera has developed a technology whereby the message itself is not sent.

“So in both cases, there is nothing for a hacker to steal.”

More on Amera IoT

Headquartered at 4145 Belt Line Road in Addison, Amera IoT has fewer than 10 employees. The company told us it was initially funded through a series of convertible notes, with initial funding “in the low single-digit millions.”

Amera IoT recently suffered a loss with the July death of its co-founder and former president and CEO, Christopher J. Daly, who previously founded MetroSplash Systems Group after serving in earlier posts at Packard Bell and Emerson Radio.

Amera’s new CEO is Gerald Amen, who has served as the company’s chief financial officer, and who previously worked as a founder/partner at Patent Solutions, Autumn Journey Hospice, and IPLC, LLC. John Ferraro has joined the company as president in another leadership change following Daly’s passing.

Amera was co-founded by Max Fleming, who developed “groundbreaking” entropy distillation techniques for use with random number generation, the company says on its website. Before joining AMERA IoT, Fleming was an enterprise agile coach and release train engineer at HPE, DXC, and Bank of America.

Valentino, Amera’s CTO, has a deep background in hardware (integrated circuit) design and marketing, with previous posts at semiconductor companies including Texas Instruments, VLSI Technology, Alcatel Microelectronics, and Rohm Electronics. He has also previously worked at “several startups,” Amera IoT says on its website.

Amera’s lead technologist is Robert Roessler, who brought nearly 40 years of software experience to the company including system architecture, API design and development, database management, and website development. A former principal software development engineer at Microsoft, Roessler’s software architecture and operating system expertise “are fundamental to Amera’s development of the Picture and PIN core software,” Amera says on its website.

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