A new high-security line of smartphones has been unveiled at this year’s Mobile World Congress. The Cyberphone line of mobile devices comes by way of digital security firm 1DataWorld, Inc., and Macate Group Corporation, a tech company specializing in security and communication software and hardware.
The first model, 1DW LF1, will hit the market in June of this year. It’s going to run on an Android system and will have a built-in fingerprint scanner that the companies say “is FBI compliant, with high-resolution image quality and low power consumption,” and which “only responds to human touch and will not permit access by images of a fingerprint, guaranteeing access is limited only to the registered card holder.” Moreover, no data is stored on the phone itself. Speaking in a press release, Macate Group Corp. CEO Isaac Daniel said the devices offer “military-grade security never before available to the general population,” and emphasized that financial data from mCommerce and mobile payments would be kept safe by the device.
That is undoubtedly important. The use of mobile devices for digital commerce is on the rise, and as such users’ sensitive financial data is facing new security threats. Security experts have long emphasized the importance of biometric technology and other advanced security measures in protecting such data. The question is, given that Apple has pioneered the growing ubiquity of fingerprint scanners on mobile devices, can the Cyberphone differentiate its system to the everyday consumer? Recent research from MasterCard has indicated that consumers don’t seem to care so much about security as they do about convenience in mobile payments, but those attitudes could change as the security landscape clarifies going forward.
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