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Finger, eye and face scans soon may replace passwords (This article is reprinted from the November 11, 2000 issue of The San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Thanks to Dale Falicon, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, for sharing this article.)
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN City workers in Oceanside were drowning in passwords. One to check e-mail, others to see water billing records or police reports, all on top of the codes and PIN numbers they had to keep straight in their off-the-job lives. Time and money were wasted answering up to 30 calls a day from workers who forgot or lost passwords. Now those calls are down to one or two a week. Two years ago, Oceanside began installing mouse-sized fingerprint scanners at city computers. So instead of fumbling for a password, city workers now need only place finger to scanner to get onto the network. “It's been a big success,” said Michael Sherwood, the city's information technology director. “The only thing we're wondering is, why hasn't the rest of the world caught on?” Biometric devices that identify people by physical characteristics such as eye patterns, voice tones and handprints have been the stuff of cinema for decades. In the real world, prohibitive costs have restricted their use mainly to government offices and military bases. Until now, that is. As sensitive and important business are increasingly conducted online, biometrics' day may finally have come. Within the next year, mobile phones and personal computers will have fingerprint scanners as optional equipment, providing convenience as well as increased security. Passwords can be easily stolen. Fingerprints can't. At the huge Comdex high-tech trade show that opened Sunday in Las Vegas, dozens of biometrics companies are competing for attention, pushing everything from voice-recognition software to programs that can purportedly distinguish computer users by how they type their passwords. “Before it was this James Bond kind of stuff, with retina scans, that kind of thing,” said Sean Berg, security segment manager at Dell Computer Corp., which will offer fingerprint scanners on cards that plug into laptops. “Now it's much more prevalent, much easier to use and much more affordable for the consumer.” The scanners on Dell laptops, designed to restrict access, will cost more than $100. That's about what Oceanside paid for the devices it bought which Sherwood says easily paid for themselves in saved labor costs.
This article was printed in “THE PRINT” |