Selfies, heartbeats and Emojis point out to a future without passwords

Despite the best efforts of enterprises, they get hacked frequently and with utmost regularity. A bit of research into cyber attacks shows that vulnerabilities exist in every enterprise and hackers only need one loophole to sneak in an enterprise and steal data.  Past and recent history shows that some of the biggest firms that have had the required budgets and the capability to prevent attacks have also got hacked. The list of high profile targets include Target, Home Depot, the US Government and closer home - Gaana.com and Ola Cabs.

While there are different reasons for which an enterprise can get hacked; stolen passwords top the list. A majority of technology giants have taken huge steps in this direction, and their efforts have culminated in an consortium called the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) alliance. The alliance which has nearly 200 members including giants such as Microsoft, Google, ARM and Samsung is looking to create a future where passwords will never be used. FIDO has already released standards on which authentication products can be built, and over 30 companies have released FIDO certified products in the marketplace.

The no password era
While the method in most cases is still based on two-factor authentication, it shows how passwords can be replaced with fingerprint scanning or other techniques. For example, Samsung announced a partnership with PayPal, wherein owners of the Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone, can authorize payments by just swiping a finger for any website or app that accepts PayPal as the payment mechanism. No password is required.

Another big player in the smartphone ecosystem, Apple, has already included a fingerprint reader in its iPhone 5s. Over time, fingerprint sensors are expected to be a common feature of every smartphone and accepted as a means of authentication across websites. For example, Japanese giant, DOCOMO, allows its users to access online services and make payments using iris recognition or fingerprint authentication methods.

Besides fingerprints, there are other elements in our body which can be used to confirm our identity. We take a look at how passwords could be replaced in the future.

Selfies

Recently MasterCard announced that it is launching a new pilot program to help shoppers improve the security of their transactions by taking photos of themselves or selfies. Users only have to snap a picture of themselves and blink once to confirm their identity.

Heartbeats

Bionym, has created a wearable device called Nymi, that uses a person's heartbeat to verify the identity. The firm is in talks with retail and online firms to let people login using the Nymi device instead of a regular password.

Brainwaves

The way your brain responds to certain words could be used to replace passwords in the future. In "Brainprint," a newly published study in academic journal Neurocomputing, researchers from Binghamton University observed the brain signals of 45 volunteers as they read a list of 75 acronyms, such as FBI and DVD.

They recorded the brain's reaction to each group of letters, focusing on the part of the brain associated with reading and recognizing words, and found that participants' brains reacted differently to each acronym, enough that a computer system was able to identify each volunteer with 94 percent accuracy. The results suggest that brainwaves could be used by security systems to verify a person's identity.

Emojis

In June 2015. a British technology firm called Intelligent Environments launched the world's first emoji-only passcode, which is easier to remember and mathematically more secure than traditional passwords. The ‘Emoji Passcode’ enables consumers to log into their banks using four emoji characters, instead of traditional PINs or passwords. The characters are selected from a bank of 44. The company believes that the new emoji security technology is also easier to remember as research has shown that that humans remember pictures better than words.

Eye scan

Myiris, a gadget from a company called EyeLock, uses your iris as a means to authenticate your identity.

While most of these deployments are in a nascent stage today, they are expected to pick up gradually as more organizations and users adopt these devices and technologies. If these deployments become successful, they can help in combining user convenience and robust security - a goal that has eluded the information security industry today.

The future of security will be defined by what Ajay Bhalla, President, Enterprise Safety and Security at MasterCard, said during the announcement of selfies as the new authentication mechanism, "We want to identify people for who they are, not what they remember." This vision probably will guide the way security and authentication methods will be built in the future.