Nymi - anyone ever heard of this???

Nymi

First Look: Startup Readies Heartbeat-Based Authentication - American Banker Article

I am fascinated by this... this could be the first big step forward in moving beyond usernames and passwords. For online business banking, this could be HUGE and put a really big dent in corporate account takeovers.

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Comments

DevilWAH

yer seen it, bit like biometrics was announced years back. Trouble is the more complex you get the more likely it is to not work in some cases. They say it could be affected by drugs, so no having a strong coffee before trying to log in

What happens if you have to have a backup password in case it does not work, and if that's the case then might as well just go with the password!

Until some one comes up with a biometric system that is 100% reliable then all these ideas are just ideas. AS one of the artical quotes

"In general, Martin describes HeartID as more accurate than face recognition and "a bit less" accurate than fingerprint recognition." That no good enough for me yet.

colemic

I see the accuracy issues... I used to work on biometrics systems in Afghanistan a few years ago, and accuracy was the biggest issue (And retina scans are pretty damn accurate.) In the civilian market, accuracy >privacy. People have this obsessive fear with giving up fingerprints or retina scans, but might be less concerned to give up heartbeat data.

As far as backup passwords, thats a good point... but specifically for commercial business banking, you could call the bank for access. Or, password gves you a limited set of commands you can process, such as tranferring money, but only to established accounts you have done so to previously. Or even just view only. There is a market for this... and the only biometrics that are 100% accurate are cost-prohibitive and far too invasive for public acceptance.

tpatt100

I think if it is part of a two factor authentication then a higher false acceptance rate is acceptable because even a false acceptance rate still runs into the second authentication issue. Problem is people want to get away from passwords so the 100 percent positive rate is required.

Really the only time I have seen biometrics used at work was for areas that had limited access already so the extra moment to verify isn't a big deal.

I know for my phone I would accept and use a finger print scanner with a higher false acceptance rate if the speed to unlock the phone was barely noticeable.

DevilWAH

I worked in a data center where they had bio metrics to enter the server halls, needed swipe card, finger print and pass-code. Trouble is the fingerprint scanner failed so often that they would end up have to get a physical key out to get in through the service door.

This was a company that had spent 10's millions on the data-center, so was not some cheep bio-metric set up but state of the art and only a few years back.

The random and variable factor in biometrices means that i dont think it will be a mainstream product for several years yet.

tpatt100

The new iPhone has a finger print reader, early reviews said it works quickly but we will see once it gets out into the wild.

colemic

tpatt100 wrote: »

The new iPhone has a finger print reader, early reviews said it works quickly but we will see once it gets out into the wild.

It better since I had this 'new technology' on a toshiba laptop in 2007.

tpatt100

colemic wrote: »

It better since I had this 'new technology' on a toshiba laptop in 2007.

Who claimed it was new? I had it on a Dell XPS laptop and it never worked, I was rubbing, people told me online to try licking my finder and drying it first all sorts of dumb stuff. Eventually Dell just dumped it because of all the complaints.

From what I have seen it works quickly and reliably and if it is accepted mainstream with it being used for authenticating purchases it could help open up other opportunities.