technology
‘A wave of solutions have been broadening the horizons of how you can login to your data’
User Interface 120
The next generation
‘In recent years, password requirements became a bit more difficult to comply with’ By Andrei Barburas
Authentication and passwords have always been a critical point in any credential based environment. It seems like in the last 18 months a wave of solutions have been broadening the horizons of how you can login to your data and some of these solutions look intriguing to say the least. Passwords have always been one of the trickiest aspects of a relatively short chain of getting you to access your data. Based on my own experience and countless other reports, coming up with a password that is secure, long enough and most importantly, easy to remember and hard for others to guess, was never easy. In recent years, password requirements became a bit more difficult to comply with; minimum eight characters, capital and small letters, at least a number and why not some special characters, that depending on what you need the password for. In some cases, the password requirements are so outlandish that ‘Internet people’ started making fun of it: “Sorry, but your
‘Seems like these methods rely more and more on your smartphone as a hardware backed authentication method’ password must contain an uppercase letter, a number, a haiku, a gang sign, a hieroglyph, and the blood of a virgin.” Last year I stumbled upon an interesting company called Launchkey. Launchkey claims to be “the first identity and access management (IAM) platform built specifically for the next generation of authentication: password-free, multi-factor, anonymous and mobile.“ They won the first place at Startup Weekend Las Vegas, which is a 54-hour hackathon competition. I have been using Launchkey since I discovered it and I have to say that it definitely makes life a bit easier when logging in to different websites. Furthermore, they offer solid solutions for developers, organisations and enterprise. They offer mobile apps for all major platforms and I have to admit that the possibilities it offers are quite hefty; geo fencing and device factors are among them. Another quite impressive solution that I recently discovered is Clef. According to the founders, “Clef is leveraging the mass adoption of smartphone technology to make an identity platform for the