“‘We’re living in a crazy world,’ Karl Martin says, ‘where, to prove who we are to our computers, we have to remember a long string of letters and numbers,'” David Morris reports for Fortune. “Martin, the chief executive of the biometric identity startup Bionym, is only half right. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has given up actually remembering my passwords and outsourced the job to a password manager. (Current tally: 112 separate strings of letters and numbers.) Experts agree that the only reliable way to secure a password is to memorize it so there is no record. But, really. Come on.”
“Bionym is hoping to shape a more sensible and intuitive way of proving your identity to devices, databases, and financial instruments. In the fall, Bionym will release the Nymi, a wristband that replaces conventional passwords with a reading of a person’s electrocardiogram pattern,” Morris reports. “But Bionym is dreaming bigger. One day, the Nymi could turn out the lights when you leave the house, lock the front door, start your car with a gesture, help a restaurant remember your name, then let you pay for your meal — all with empty pockets.”
“The Nymi has competition for the role in that future scenario. One contender is a small black fob called the AxisKey, made by Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.-based Sonavation, that uses ultrasound to authenticate a person. The device is expected to go on sale in mid-June,” Morris reports. “Both products are touted as more secure than their existing competition in the consumer market — namely, the nearly 90 million iPhone 5s handsets that come with a fingerprint sensor.”
MacDailyNews Note: Please see: Security researcher: Apple iPhone 5s Touch ID is truly better security.
Morris reports, “The Nymi will scan a person’s ECG only when it is worn on the wrist, likely most often in the morning when they are calm and rested. During the scan it will connect with a mobile device and use three-factor security to do so. To pose as a Nymi user, according to Martin, an attacker would need to ‘steal your wristband, and then steal your phone, and then they need to have a false positive [matching ECG pattern].’ And as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Alan Kaplan points out, ‘An ECG is very difficult to counterfeit.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Future iWatch/iWallet roadkill and/or Apple acquisition(s).
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
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