Hertz Foundation Entrepreneurship Award goes to Vivek Nair for AI cybersecurity startup

(Press-News.org) Hertz Fellow Vivek Nair thinks that traditional cybersecurity approaches don’t cut it when it comes to the world of rapidly advancing AI systems. His startup company, Multifactor, aims to provide new security solutions that are designed from the ground up to protect consumers and businesses from AI-related data breaches. 

Nair has now won funds from the Hertz Foundation via the Harold Newman and David Galas Entrepreneurial Initiative, which will be used to support the development of multiple new cybersecurity products aimed at both companies and individual consumers. Multifactor has also just been selected to the fall 2025 batch of Y Combinator, a prestigious and competitive startup accelerator that has helped launch top companies, including Airbnb, Instacart, Reddit and Stripe. 

“We want to specifically understand the vulnerabilities that are caused by the adoption of AI and AI agents in different applications, and then solve those vulnerabilities,” says Nair. “The Hertz Community has been key for Multifactor’s trajectory, and this new support helps us keep developing our open-source technologies.”

Since 2012, the Harold Newman and David Galas Entrepreneurial Initiative has provided financial and professional support to Hertz Fellows, who propose innovative entrepreneurial projects. The projects put forth by Hertz Fellows are judged by a panel of experts, and one or two per year are selected to receive support. The Initiative recognizes honorary Hertz Fellow Harold Newman, a former member of the Hertz Foundation board of directors, as well as David Galas, a Hertz Fellow and chairman of the board. For each selected Hertz Fellow, the Initiative provides not only up to $25,000 in funding, but also mentoring and feedback from others within the Hertz Community. 

Nair has been studying cybersecurity since he was a high school student, when he launched several startups and began working for a healthcare tech startup in Singapore, addressing how to keep patients’ sensitive health data safe. As a Hertz Fellow at UC Berkeley several years later, he completed a PhD in computer science and developed new cryptographic methods. Then, he worked for the CIA, applying his expertise to national cybersecurity challenges.

Today, he is focused on how AI agents offer new windows into people’s data. He points toward a recent demonstration by security researchers showing how to easily hijack Google’s AI bot, Gemini, with a poisoned Google Calendar invitation. Even if a user doesn’t open the calendar invitation, Gemini accesses it and follows its instructions on controlling devices associated with Google — potentially leading to security breaches such as unlocking linked doors in someone’s home. 

“Instead of tricking a person to do something they’re not supposed to, like open an email, you’re tricking an AI agent,” Nair explains. 

Multifactor — which was co-founded by Nair and mathematician and cryptographer Colin Roberts — has already developed cryptographic techniques that protect against these vulnerabilities. Their products let AI agents log into systems and accounts without ever having the credentials in plain text, and they ensure that an AI agent only has authorization to the exact tools and features it needs. They also have developed a method to collect extremely detailed logs of the actions that an AI agent carries out. 

“Right now, a lot of companies are trying to fit the conventional human security model to AI agents,” says Nair. “They are forcing AI agents to interact with systems in the same way a person does, but this leads to a lot of vulnerabilities. We’re building solutions that enable the exact same functionality, just without the security risk.”

Already, Multifactor has partnered with several large companies that want to ensure that their AI workflows are locked down securely. They are also unveiling a waitlist for a more consumer-oriented security platform. The technology, acting like an advanced password manager, would allow people to give AI agents — like ChatGPT or Claude — access to certain data from other accounts without having direct access and passwords. 

“This is a cool way that we hope everyday users of AI can take advantage of our platform to make their day-to-day lives easier and safer,” says Nair. 

Nair says that the mission of Multifactor — a public benefit company that is making most of its technologies open-source — aligns closely with the Hertz Foundation’s mission. It aims to improve the security and privacy of American companies and consumers, he points out. To that end, many of his early angel investors and backers have been Hertz Fellows, and his connections through Hertz have shaped how his ideas developed into Multifactor. Hertz Fellows, including Philip Welkhoff and his wife Martina, Judy Savitskaya and Max Kleiman-Weiner, have been integral to his success, he says. 

“Cybersecurity is often broken down into pillars — identity security, web security and network security. Sometimes you see technology creating new pillars, like the emergence of cloud security. We think agentic AI security is the next pillar of cybersecurity and we want to be the company that defines it,” Nair says. “Readers can be amongst the first to experience this technology for themselves by joining the waitlist at multifactor.com.”

About the Hertz Foundation The Hertz Foundation is the nation’s preeminent nonprofit organization committed to advancing American scientific and technological leadership. For more than 60 years, it has stood as an unwavering pillar of independent support through the renowned Hertz Fellowship, cultivating a multidisciplinary network of innovators whose work has positively impacted millions of lives. Learn more at hertzfoundation.org.

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