Technological advancement is all about solving existing problems by finding creative solutions and boy, do we have a lot of them! The problems I mean.
The more problems we solve, it seems the more we create. It is almost like humanity is constantly on a test-taking phase, perennially trying to answer questions, only, the questions never end!
One such problem, which is a result of technological advancement, is of digital security. This means protecting your online accounts or your gadgets from would be intruders.
While we have had a solution in the form of “passwords” for ages now, it has given rise to another problem, especially in more recent times, and that is of lack of convenience.
Security Vs Convenience
Let me first give you a brief history of this problem in case you were born only yesterday. The mass adoption of personal computers and then the internet and now smartphones, has led to us living a more digital life.
The various aspects of our lives including the more confidential ones are now commonly stored either offline on our various devices or online, safely protected by the current safety measures, which comprise mainly of usernames and passwords.
This had worked out pretty well until hackers figured out how to break through. As a result, people began to use even more complex passwords but hackers still found a way in. Then the two-factor authentication was introduced but this made the convenience problem even more severe.
The thing is, it is difficult (and frustrating) enough to remember all the usernames and passwords of all the different services and gadgets we use, but having to wait for a code to pop-up as text message or an email is just ridiculous. Saving passwords in the browser eases up that pain a bit but even that is not safe these days as has been revealed recently.
Biometric Authentication To The Rescue
Even though biometric authentication has been around for a long, long time now, they are only now making their way to our smart devices. Smartphones and laptops are increasingly being equipped with biometrics scanning that make things a lot easier.
Be it fingerprint scanning, iris scanning or facial recognition, biometric authentication ensures security along with convenience because they are unique to the individual and cannot be stolen unlike your passwords and the process to authenticate only takes like a second, and you don’t have to remember anything.
Biometric authentication is now slowly getting mass adoption and with that, its application is seeing a varied use as well (like contact-less payments). MasterCard is planning to use your heartbeat to verify purchases and just recently it was reported that Australia’s international airports are going to start replacing passports with facial recognition! Now that, is convenience.
But as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, technology often gives birth to another problem while trying to solve something and in this case, a new problem has come to light and that is the problem of privacy.
Privacy Concerns
When you set up your fingerprint, or any other unique-to-you body part for biometric identification and authentication, the information regarding those parts, is stored with the tech companies and eventually find their way into the database of law enforcement agencies or worse, intelligence agencies like FBI or CIA or your country’s equivalent.
That raises a huge privacy concern because your biometric data may be used for reasons not aware to you or even for purposes not intended originally. We all know how the government has been surveilling the public and the accumulation of such data only makes the matters worse.
As is usually the case, this might get resolved with yet another piece of technology in the future but until then, I think this is direction the world seems to be going right now as far as digital security is concerned.