Passwords No More

A few weeks ago I was going through my countless amounts of documents on my laptop the other day when I stumbled  upon a document titled "PRIVATE." Of course I knew what was in the document, but it made me laugh to myself for a little because of all the documents I could have found I found this one (no thanks to the clever title). When I opened it up I immediately saw 8 pages of website names, usernames and passwords. It was confidential information for any and all websites that I use. Whether it be for school, entertainment or for personal information all of my logins were typed out in this one file. All I could think was the possibilities for someone if they had access to information such as my passwords and personal information like my social security number and bank account. Of course I quit out of it and did not think about it again because I told myself that nobody would ever be able to find this information.

I am bringing it up again because I was surfing the web when I came across an article (read here) about how inconsistent and unreliable passwords are becoming as technology continues to advance. People are becoming less and less worried about their predictable, overused passwords while others are looking for ways to hack accounts more often. In the article I stumbled across the FIDO Alliance.

The FIDO Alliance is a new and upcoming company who is working to "change the nature of online authentication." They are going about this by creating specifications for machinery in order to reduce the use of passwords while still trying to ensure security and protection over the Internet. A specific project is FIDO 0.1, which works on taking our commonly used devices and enhancing them so that it is more tailored to the user and making it harder to be accessed by those who are not authorized to do so. This could be by using a combination of things such as a fingerprint, your voice or something else unique to ones self. Another idea is to have an interoperable device that can be owned by the user and must be used along with a device to gain access like a hard-drive or a key. FIDO hopes for this to become a more universal idea that will improve safety and security for everyone.

This is still a very new, strange idea because passwords are still effective enough for most of us. Why change something that isn't broken? But it is still something to consider because it will be more useful in the upcoming years. As technology advances at insane speeds, our privacy and security begins to be disrupted more and more.