The ubiquitous smartphone, which many people now depend on for business and in their personal lives, is emerging as a promising replacement for passwords used in authentication.
Most experts agree that a password killer is necessary to bolster Web site security. People's fondness for easy-to-guess passwords that are often used across sites has severely weakened their effectiveness. In addition, sophisticated decryption technology has made even encrypted passwords easily acquirable by hackers.
Because a smartphone is the one device few people are without, it's seen as the perfect place to store credentials. Add the many sensors in a phone that can be used to identify a user, and the case for using the device for authentication becomes stronger.
"I think it's brilliant," Trent Henry, analyst for Gartner, said of smartphone-based authentication. "We're finding that this will be the type of authentication mode in the future."
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