An Aventura-based technology company is making a name for itself in Silicon Valley with the launch of a new on-line identity protection and secure payment system.

Silicon Valley media heavyweight Dean Takahashi used his Digital Beat column Aug. 10 for an extensive look at Stop Shield, the new product from Kemesa, which lists its executive offices at the Peninsula condos on NE183rd Street in the City of Excellence.

Now, Aventura is about as far from Silicon Valley as one can get within the continental U.S. But the links are there, particularly in the realm of venture capital. Kemesa has already tapped $5.2 million in angel financing and expects to seek an institutional round of financing early next year.

Steve Bachenheimer, the CEO of Kemesa, is the former president and COO who expanded National Foods – parent of Hebrew National – before its sale to ConAgra. He has assembled a team of IT powers including:

* Bill Niedermeyer, a software innovator whose work is at the heart of Kemesa’s patent-pending technology, as chief technology officer;

* Keith Dowdling, formerly with Itenik, as CFO,

* And Chris Sontag, former CEO of Effective Shareholder Solutions and VP of electronic banking for Star Bank (now US Bank).

Stop Shield is unique in that it serves as a sort of middleman between the user and Internet sites requiring sensitive information – from credit card and Social Security numbers to passwords and phone numbers. The Stop Shield companion will create unique and anonymous information – from e-mail addresses to credit card numbers -- for use in transactions with sites as varied as Amazon.com and the New York Times. The only connection to the actual user will reside within Stop Shield’s database in Utah. Stop Shield says that database has been attached 1.6 million times since January without the loss on any data.

Shop Shield is the first product to meet the Identity Theft Resource Center’s “recommended performance characteristics” required for classification as a Secure Payment Agent.

It’s a booming market, with about 25 million cases of identity theft reported.

The service is available for a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 or on a per transaction basis for fees ranging from 99 cents to $1.99. A 60-day free trial version for Firefox users is available at www.shopshield.net.

To read Takahashi’s column, go to: http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/08/10/shopshield-lets-you-shop-online-worry-free-without-giving-away-your-identity/