A Japanese company, Futen, has come out with a USB disk that comes with data encryption called Lockface. There's nothing new or novel about a pre-encrypted USB disk. What's new and novel is this device's use of your computer's webcam: Lockface uses it for running its face recognition software, used instead of a password to access the USB drive.
You have to supply several pictures of your face so Lockface can recognize you; separate software is not necessary. Lockface uses AES-256 to protect the contents of the device, and has error rates of around 2%. Welcome to the Brave New World of biometrics. Error rates of 2% go both ways, of course. In 1.91% of instances, it allows the wrong person to access the contents. In 1.98% of cases, the right person is not admitted access to the files. There aren't any explanations regarding the use of photographs to defeat the biometric process, etc. But let's assume that such attempts are included into the error rates. With error rates of 2%, how secure are you and your data? Not very. If I'm understanding it correctly, it means that a person could use makeup to resemble the device's owner, and at least once in one hundred attempts the poseur will be given access. Perhaps, you don't even have to look like the owner and will still be given access to the contents. (Although, for $110--anywhere from twice to four times the price of a standard 4 GB USB memory stick--I'd hope there's real technology behind it that's more than a gimmick.) I don't know about you, but I'd rather stick to an alphanumeric password that is at list six characters long and contains at least a couple of special characters. In terms of the odds of bypassing it, it's much lower than 2%. Encryption is a powerful way of securing important files. But there are ways of hamstringing it.
You have to supply several pictures of your face so Lockface can recognize you; separate software is not necessary. Lockface uses AES-256 to protect the contents of the device, and has error rates of around 2%. Welcome to the Brave New World of biometrics.
Error rates of 2% go both ways, of course. In 1.91% of instances, it allows the wrong person to access the contents. In 1.98% of cases, the right person is not admitted access to the files.
There aren't any explanations regarding the use of photographs to defeat the biometric process, etc. But let's assume that such attempts are included into the error rates. With error rates of 2%, how secure are you and your data?
Not very. If I'm understanding it correctly, it means that a person could use makeup to resemble the device's owner, and at least once in one hundred attempts the poseur will be given access. Perhaps, you don't even have to look like the owner and will still be given access to the contents. (Although, for $110--anywhere from twice to four times the price of a standard 4 GB USB memory stick--I'd hope there's real technology behind it that's more than a gimmick.)
I don't know about you, but I'd rather stick to an alphanumeric password that is at list six characters long and contains at least a couple of special characters. In terms of the odds of bypassing it, it's much lower than 2%.
Encryption is a powerful way of securing important files. But there are ways of hamstringing it.
Related Articles and Sites:http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/12/16/lockface-usb-drive-that-uses-face-recognition-to-verify-users/