The final week of November began with Apple quietly acquiring PrimeSense Ltd, makers of the motion sensing technology used by the Microsoft Xbox Kinect. The technology in question allows for the detection of moving and static objects, which is currently being leveraged by the newly released Xbox One videogame console to offer players real-time account switching based on facial recognition. The purchase was made for $350 million, and though Apple has released no official word on what it intends to do with the technology, the gesture and face recognition has plenty of obvious applications when considering the company’s product line, especially Apple TV, iPhone and iPad.
Nok Nok Labs, one of the founding members of the FIDO Alliance made the news this week for it’s disruptive influence on the antiquated but still ubiquitous password security method. Named as a SINET 16 Innovator for this year’s SINET Showcase 2013 event. The Showcase will be running December 4 and 5, and Nok Nok Labs will be presenting a demonstration of its notably disruptive technology. This will be coming directly on the heels of “The Password is Dead!”: a webinar held on Monday, December 2, in which Nok Nok CEO Phil Dunkelberger will be be discussing the implications of this attitude towards passwords with fellow FIDO founder and Alliance president Michael Barrett.
Shortly after Nok Nok Labs was singled out by SINET, the announcement came that in support of the FIDO Alliance, it and Swedish sensor manufacturer Fingerprint Cards AB have joined forces to create an end-to-end fingerprint biometrics based mobile authentication infrastructure. The expansive solution combines the above mentioned disruptive technology and FPC’s brand new FPC 1020 Touch Sensor optimized for Android and Windows devices. This marks the first project the FPC has completed specifically in support of the FIDO Alliance.
If this constant stream of news regarding security innovations doesn’t excite you enough to go and seek out an SDK based strong authentication replacement for your online authentication needs, then perhaps you are unaware of the full story when it comes to how proper password practices are upheld in society. According to Mark Burnett, author of Perfect Passwords, in 2011 the most common password (used by 4.7 percent of the 6 million usernames he surveyed) was “password”: a series of characters literally spelled out beside the text field in which it would be entered. I wrote an article going further down the rabbit hole of the insanity that is the most common passwords, and I hope you will agree that it makes a good case for the widespread adoption of what I’ve been calling the “post-password paradigm.”
If you aren’t in need of any convincing that passwords are passe, then be sure to sign up for Monday’s webinar. Michael Barrett has been calling the password dead all year, and the discussion between him and Phil Dunkelberger is one that shouldn’t be missed.
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