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Biometrics: Your body is your password
Original article By David Braue
As the spectre of Y2K fades and corporate IT strategists resume the process of upgrading infrastructure and enabling e-business, the challenge of maintaining security in increasingly widely distributed environments has become important, and given that the increasing mobility of the workforce means you can't be sure who's really at the other end of the network link, it's clear that simple user ID and password logons are no longer sufficient. In addition, some high-speed internet connections such as broadband internet may not be a solution against online security breach.
In the past, the issue has often been resolved through the adoption of handheld hardware tokens that provide a one-off, time-limited code to the login procedure. However, these tokens are also one more thing users can lose. Sensing an opportunity to simplify access even further, biometrics vendors are pushing down prices and kicking off corporate trials intended to make their products the next major standard for user authentication in corporate IT environments.
US-based research firm International Biometric Group predicts that the world-wide biometric market will grow from $US58.4 million in 1999 to $US594 million by 2003. To achieve this growth, however, vendors will need to overcome a number of obstacles; most importantly, corporate awareness of the technology's advancement. Analyst firm Forrester Research recently reported a glum future for biometrics in a survey of 50 Global 2500 companies. At the time of the survey, none of the respondents were using biometrics, and a meagre 4% and 2% expected they would be using biometrics to authenticate users and business partners respectively, within two years.
Forrester predicts that the technology will ultimately bomb due to long-held beliefs that it is expensive and unwieldy. The lingering perception that biometrics is invasive technology which compromises privacy compounds the problem. These fears have been fuelled by privacy lobbyists fighting the technology's use in governmental identification schemes. Yet within relatively closed corporate environments, rapidly dropping costs and improved integration have made today's biometrics an extremely practical, inexpensive and transparent method of user authentication.
Original article By David Braue
As the spectre of Y2K fades and corporate IT strategists resume the process of upgrading infrastructure and enabling e-business, the challenge of maintaining security in increasingly widely distributed environments has become important, and given that the increasing mobility of the workforce means you can't be sure who's really at the other end of the network link, it's clear that simple user ID and password logons are no longer sufficient. In addition, some high-speed internet connections such as broadband internet may not be a solution against online security breach.
In the past, the issue has often been resolved through the adoption of handheld hardware tokens that provide a one-off, time-limited code to the login procedure. However, these tokens are also one more thing users can lose. Sensing an opportunity to simplify access even further, biometrics vendors are pushing down prices and kicking off corporate trials intended to make their products the next major standard for user authentication in corporate IT environments.
US-based research firm International Biometric Group predicts that the world-wide biometric market will grow from $US58.4 million in 1999 to $US594 million by 2003. To achieve this growth, however, vendors will need to overcome a number of obstacles; most importantly, corporate awareness of the technology's advancement. Analyst firm Forrester Research recently reported a glum future for biometrics in a survey of 50 Global 2500 companies. At the time of the survey, none of the respondents were using biometrics, and a meagre 4% and 2% expected they would be using biometrics to authenticate users and business partners respectively, within two years.
Forrester predicts that the technology will ultimately bomb due to long-held beliefs that it is expensive and unwieldy. The lingering perception that biometrics is invasive technology which compromises privacy compounds the problem. These fears have been fuelled by privacy lobbyists fighting the technology's use in governmental identification schemes. Yet within relatively closed corporate environments, rapidly dropping costs and improved integration have made today's biometrics an extremely practical, inexpensive and transparent method of user authentication.
by Rtucker