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The password is something all of us struggle with. In fact, the worst and easiest to crack passwords are the most commonly used across the world. This abuse is so common that we have all at some point of time used 12345 or ‘password’ to secure anything from our email to bank accounts. It is a good thing that at least some of these services prevent you from using simplistic passwords.
However, all this could soon be a thing of the past. There have been efforts for many years to find an alternative to the text input as a password. Companies like Lenovo and Toshiba have been very successful in incorporating fingerprint scanners on their computing devices and of late the same technology has started becoming popular in smartphones too. But the next phase will not require any intervention from the user and the computer will by itself be able to login the authenticated user.
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Microsoft has with Windows 10 launched Hello which recognises the face of the user and logs them in. However, the technology is not available on all devices at the moment. That will have to wait till Intel’s RealSense technology becomes more ubiquitous and affordable.
RealSense cameras are able to scan the faces and use the unique characteristics of the same to login in the device’s owner without the need for a password. A lot of high end Windows 10 devices in the coming months will natively support the feature. If a PC has been locked, the user will be able to start working by just standing in front of it. In the locked mode, the camera will keep scanning for face that unlocks the PC.
However, the cost of this convenience could be the extra power consumed by the camera in the interim. Device manufacturers are likely to add a timeout period to prevent wastage of power. Google has for sometime now been using voice to negate passwords on smartphones and tablets running Android. Now, it is tying up with Intel to bring some of these technologies to laptops too. In fact, the first RealSense camera on a smartphone will be on Google’s Project Tango devices, the first prototypes of which were on show during the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.
Read more: Best of IDF15: Intel RealSense to Google’s Project Tango
Another interesting development will be the use of wearables to secure enterprise computing. Enterprise devices start getting locked when the user, or rather the wrist band he or she is wearing, goes beyond a certain distance. As the band comes back in field it will be able to unlock the computer too. However, the security here will not be linked just to the band as the band will be tied in a way to the vitals of the authenticated user. Another person using the same band will not be able to unlock the device, unless authenticated.
