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Here?s how to jack up password protection
INDIAN INSTITUTE of Technology (IIT-K) director Dr Sanjay G Dhande urged academicians, scientists and officials of various enforcement agencies to come together to develop and promote useable biometric technology for the benefit of the nation as a whole and individuals.
INDIAN INSTITUTE of Technology (IIT-K) director Dr Sanjay G Dhande urged academicians, scientists and officials of various enforcement agencies to come together to develop and promote useable biometric technology for the benefit of the nation as a whole and individuals.
As part of his inaugural address at the workshop on biometrics here today, Dr Dhande said there were several challenges to be faced in the biometric-tech sector. The tech needs to be data-based, accurate and with a large depository of matching content. Besides, the pace of progress in the area of biometric technology has been quite slow.
He said unless a working technology solution by adopting a workable policy was not introduced, biometric technology may lose its charm among the agencies who needed it most. At present, user agencies were very eager to adopt biometric tech but their eagerness would fade out if the perfection in the sector could not be achieved as part of a time-bound programme.
Dr Dhande suggested a ‘Quasi Commercial Group’ should be constituted for technology transfer. He said biometrics could not be highly commercialised and therefore, awareness needed to be created in select areas.
He further said scientists should make effort to develop a ‘24x7 daily surveillance system’ for society. He said it was a good sign that interest in bometrics was growing in areas of ‘small-sale security’ for buildings and IT systems and for use in Identity cards. He said as social consciousness towards individual security had increased recently and personal authentication systems using passwords were at risk. But biometrical systems were foolproof.
Workshop chief co-ordinator Dr Phalguni Gupta said the biometric technology system was preferred over traditional methods involving passwords and PIN numbers at points of identification as the person to be identified has to be physically present at the identification point and secondly, the biometric techniques of identification obviated the need of remembering a password or carrying a token.
He said by replacing the PINs, biometric techniques could potentially prevent fraudulent use of ATMs, cellular phones, smart cards, desktop PCs, work stations and networks.
