Mobility is consumable. We are all people on the move, and as the Internet grows our personal investment in our digital lives, we need to maintain and protect the devices that enable us to stay up to date with the current state of humanity. Don’t forget: smartphone sales are expected to reach new highs this year.
This is also a year of better-than password authentication. Put these two bigger ideas together and it is no surprise that this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2014) in Las Vegas had such a large representation from the mobile ID industries.
To start off, LG put a foot forward in the active living biometrics race with two wearable devices that in conjunction with a smartphone can connect you to your device in new and exciting ways. The LG Lifeband and Heart Rate Earphones (a smartwatch and headphones, respectively) work together to provide movement and blood biometrics (heart beat and oxygen levels) to a mobile device synced via bluetooth. The applications of this technology are clearly and purposefully marketed as fitness-minded, but with so many passive biometric measurements, one can’t help but extrapolate exciting invisible security factors from these new gadgets.
Speaking of invisibility in mobile authentication, voice biometrics showed up quite prominently this most recent CES. As promised by the FIDO Alliance in December, voice biometrics company AGNITiO introduced its first FIDO Ready certified solution. AGNITiO’s FIDO Ready Voice iD, working in tandem with Nok Nok Labs’ Multifactor Authentication Client is able to provide strong biometric online authentication that is both secure and convenient enough to get the Alliance’s seal of approval.
Staying with voice biometrics on mobile devices, ZTE announced at this CES the newest upgrades to its smartphone’s Car Mode. Powered by Nuance voice biometrics, the ZTE Car Mode has always allowed for hands-free interface, but this newest iteration allowed for improved functionality including a biometric lock-screen.
EyeVerify, a Kansas City startup that has created a proprietary security technology based on the vascular patterns on the human eye (called and EyePrint), was recognized in the prestigious Mobility Awards. Voted on by industry professionals from research, analysis and journalism sectors, the Awards were presented by Compass Intelligence, EyeVerify was on the receiving end of two distinctions: “Rookie of the Year” and “Technology Innovation.”
Despite all of the excitement emitting from Las Vegas due to CES, there was still news from the outside. OASIS Open announced that it has appointed Optimum Biometric Labs (OBL) to lead its newest standard. Designed to maintain a minimum quality requirement and provide proper customer care in the areas of M2M and biometric technologies, this is just one more sign that things are looking optimistic for the strong mobile authentication industry as we speed into the new year.
This wasn’t all that came out of CES 2014, of course. For a look at what other strong authentication news came out of Las Vegas this past week be sure to take a look at the findBIOMETICS Industry News Roundup.
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