Biometric alternatives

Think about it: impossible to remember, but you have it on you all the time--your DNA. This concept is leading to growing interest in biometric authentication alternatives. Recent research conducted by Ericsson ConsumerLab in 2013 indicates that 52 percent of smartphone users want to use their fingerprints instead of passwords and 48 percent are interested in using eye-recognition to unlock their screen. A total of 74 percent believe that biometric smartphones will become mainstream during 2014.

Biometric alternatives are already reaching the market, from major device manufacturers to independent software vendors (ISVs). Some solutions are as simple as sliding on a smartphone cover. FingerQ offers a plug-and-play case for smartphones that enables a variety of services based on fingerprint authentication, including point-to-point security, secure chatting, and data encryption and decryption. Others use voice pattern recognition, which can be even more secure than fingerprint authentication.

As we were going to press, Google purchased an Israeli company, SlickLogin, that uses a unique, nearly silent sound wave to authenticate user identity. "Today we`re announcing that the SlickLogin team is joining Google, a company that shares our core beliefs that logging in should be easy instead of frustrating, and authentication should be effective without getting in the way," Google said in an official statement. Make no mistake: biometric authentication is hot.

Solutions in the marketplace

Single-sign on (SSO) and Unified Identity Management aren’t the same thing, but are often sold in conjunction. Some of the companies who offer unified identity management tools include Intercede, Identropy, Centrify, SutiSoft, InfoSys, Dell, Oracle, and AirWatch. Even device manufacturers are getting in the game, like Samsung, with its recently announced KNOX 2.0 platform. Carriers are already signing on to KNOX because it enables split billing, one bill for the data usage on the business identity, and one for personal.

Telus recently selected a solution from Intercede, MyID, to offer its employees secure access to networks and buildings using a mobile device. “At TELUS we’re aiming to have 70-percent of our employees working from home at least some of the time by 2015. With that goal in mind we’ve teamed up with Intercede to ensure our employees can easily access our network any time, from anywhere,” said Ken Haertling, vice-president and Chief Security Officer, TELUS. “What better way to do this than through the convenience of our employees’ mobile devices.”

Many SSO solutions on the market only work within a proscribed ecosystem, or only in the mobile domain. A platform agnostic solution that encompasses data center, cloud, and mobile is available from Centrify. Centrify helps to manage SaaS applications. For applications that support a single sign-on (SSO) protocol such as SAML or OpenID, Centrify can tie them back to Active Directory. Access to those applications can be controlled through identity and policy. Centrify currently supports about a thousand business applications in this way. Applications that don’t support an SSO protocol but authenticate users via username and password can’t be tied back to Active Directory.

However, access to these apps can still be simplified by allowing end users to store their usernames and passwords in the Centrify vault in the cloud in order to effectuate single sign-on. This gives users the convenience of not having to recall a username and passwords for their Web apps and frequented Websites. Also, Centrify’s zero sign-on experience is a component of Samsung Knox container technology. Centrify has a mobile authentication services SDK that independent software developers will use to support this zero sign-on silent authentication to rich mobile apps via the Samsung device. This creates a simplified experience for users to securely access their business apps via their smartphone.