Bench Talk

Password security is flawed—as Hawaiians recently found to their cost—because it relies on humans to create a memorable yet tough-to-hack secret phrase. Biometrics, pioneered by the smartphone’s fingerprint scanner, offers a better alternative.

The Internet was not built with security in mind. It was built predominantly by researchers looking to pass around scientific data. The assumption was that only good players would ever have access to the systems that eventually gave rise to the Internet we all know today. We have made significant progress with security in the decades since the Internet first became accessible to the public, but the cat and mouse game between the good guys and bad guys continues.