The big event that had everyone’s attention fixed on France this week was the 2013 CARTES Secure Connexions Event in Paris. The annual security event is considered to be among the industry’s most high profile gatherings of the year, complete with an awards ceremony celebrating innovations across a wide number of security-based categories.
The awards are appropriately called the SESAMES, and Oberhtur Technologies won one of the eleven presented to companies that serve a very diverse set of security needs. Oberthur’s “My Voice is My Password” mobile and online solution was granted the SESAMES Award in the category of “Trusted Internet/ Authentication.” The solution is powered by Agnitio’s voice biometrics engine which is popping up a lot recently in news concerning voice based authentication in the mobile landscape, and this award certainly helps bolster its authority.
CARTES also saw Morpho (Safran) bring innovation to the mobile transaction world, this time with face recognition. The 3DBioSecure authentication application brings us back to the idea that current generation built-in smartphone technology like cameras can add a biometric level of security to payment protection. The Morpho solution authenticates purchases by capturing a user’s face via the phone’s camera instead of by the now old multi-factor method of sending an SMS to a phone containing a verification code. Sounds innovative? It is. 3DBioSecure was shortlisted for the same SESAMES Award as Oberthur.
mCommerce is clearly a major driving factor in the adoption of stronger-than-password authentication. It makes sense: if buying online is more convenient than going to the store, then it stands to reason that adding the novel flexibility of mobility into the equation will only make it more appealing, and ease of use should never come at the expense of security.
Still, certain buying experiences would naturally seem to resist the do-it-yourself nature of buying from a tablet or smartphone. Canadian company Wondereur, who recently partnered with MasterCard Priceless, puts the nail in the physical store’s coffin with its mobile art discovery platform. The Wondereur app, which was showcased at this week’s Google-sponsored ideaBOOST event in Toronto, Ontario, has optimized the end user mobile art buying experience, bringing an arguably superior emotional connection to the act of purchasing fine art.
Finally, coming to the world of cloud security, we find another interesting angle from which to look at mobile identity. Biometric security takes advantage of the unique characteristics that naturally occur in the development of our bodies. What we see in the Saturnus cloud security solution that has resulted from a new partnership between Intrinsic-ID and INSIDE Secure is that the same basic principles of biometrics can be applied to integrated circuits. Saturnus’ clone-proof smart card chip USB encryption device uses the “biometrics for electronic devices” to secure them in the cloud.
Moving into the final week of November, be sure to register for ‘The Password is Dead!’ – a free webinar presented by findBIOMERTICS and Acuity Market Intelligence featuring FIDO Alliance members Michael Barrett and Phi Dunkelberger. The declaration is turning from a revolutionary call to arms to a consumer reality faster than you can say “fingerprint scanners on smartphones.” Register and find out exactly what a post-password future means.
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