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21 Jul 2011
KEYSTONE, COLORADO: Traditional computer identity authentication systems will never work, and a totally new approach to online security is needed, a Gartner distinguished analyst has claimed.
Bob Blakley argued in a provocative presentation to the Cloud Identity Summit 2011 that every authentication technology has glaring weaknesses, and that the industry is stuck in a rut.
"Authentication is a disaster. In the future we will stop authenticating. It doesn't work and it's a pain in the neck to use. It's better to do recognition," he said.
Blakley went on to say that everyone online leaves digital footprints which can be used for identification and to establish trust.
Applications like Google Goggles are already showing the usefulness of such systems, and are more reliable than traditional authentication methods, according to the analyst.
If someone has digital footprints on social networking media that data can be used to authenticate people, he said. This is more reliable than standard authentication and is much more likely to weed out imposters.
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Do you agree?
Another impossible task
Many years ago the author E.E. (Doc) Smith looked at the problem of identity in the 'Lensman' series of books and wrote something along the lines of 'whatever science can produce, science can duplicate'. To overcome the problem of uniquely identifying his heroes he had to invent something that relied on a technology that could never be understood or duplicated by the forces of evil. Since at its most basic a computer identity consists only of 0s and 1s whatever system is developed will be capable of duplication. To address the specific point regarding data on social networking sites it should be obvious to anyone that many of the entries in facebook etc are entirely fictitious and it is ludicrously easy to set up a false identity to gain access to such sites. The best one can hope for is to stay a step ahead of the bad guys but I don't think this is it.
Posted by: Paul Vine 22 Jul 2011
What?
So I can see my cable bill or transfer money at my bank account because the bank knows that I visit a bunch of different locations? Because of the browser I use - and because I'm in a certain city. While I agree that standard auth is broken. Fingerprint is meant to do a statistical mean to have information about you to sell and present advertising. It could augment - but I think you are selling a gimmic in the name of fixing the problem. God forbid I borrow a friend's computer while traveling in Paris to transfer funds.
Posted by: RamsesM 21 Jul 2011