Blog: Shawn Rogers: Web 2.0 Expo

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Web 2.0 Expo - Tuesday

Goodbye Passwords – Hello Security
As I mentioned yesterday it continues to impress me how so many Web 2.0 companies are finding ways to serve the enterprise. This post should be especially interesting to any company in the banking and finance industries or for that matter any company that serves customers who “login in” or who have employees that access system that you want to secure.

A new company launched this morning here at the Web 2.0 Expo and it’s possibly the most brilliant yet simple solution I’ve encountered here. So let me lay this out, I’ll use a banking example. The common approach for you and I to access our online banking system is to use a username and password. The problem is that most of us can’t remember more than a couple passwords so what happens is that in the end we use the same one for just about everything we do. Very Insecure! Plus anyone who has spyware on their machine can be compromised the first time they use their password.

The other issue is with many security features like the code on my American Express card the security number feature exists where someone else could access it. If I lose the card or it’s stolen the person who ends up with it has the code.

So, here’s how the Vidoop system works to eliminate the authentication issues. They have a new approach to the “login in issue”. When you sign into the system for the first time you’re prompted to select several categories that you find easy to remember. They are associated with images you will receive when logging into a secure system. So let’s say you choose planes, trains and automobiles.

When you arrive at a login in screen enabled with Vidoop you will see a grid of random images each image has a letter next to it. The user looks for his categories in this case planes, trains and automobiles and enters the corresponding numbers as the login instead of a password. The great thing here is the images and codes change every time but its easy and secure because the only person the knows which numbers on the grid to use is the person who knows the categories to look for, plus the images change for every login so the plane on the first login might be a jet and the next time a bi-plane. To make it even more interesting when using Vidoop from a computer the system passes a token to the computer on the first interaction and from then on the Vidoop system looks for the token as well as the correct image recognition.

This is a powerful solution but on the surface it’s extremely simple to administer and distribute. If you’re challenged by security issue you should really look at these guys.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Expo, Web 2.0, business Intelligence, Security, Vidoop, Banking