That's what Intel wants you to do starting next year

Nov 6, 2014 14:30 GMT  ·  By

The next few years are bound to bring along a lot of changes to how we build technology and interact with it. Some plans, though, might not be appreciated by everyone as much as the big names in the IT industry think.

Security is one of these sensitive spots. It's not just about finding ways to make sure your belongings aren't stolen, but also about protecting whatever data is on your electronic devices.

After all, since the plan is to have everything connected to the Internet of Things, hackers are only gaining more means through which to conduct cybercrimes, not fewer.

You would think that password protection would remain as important as ever. Indeed, a case can be made for it rising in importance, considering how many hardcoded/encrypted flash drives have been coming out.

There are even SSDs and HDDs with numpads on the side, requiring you to input a pin before the data on them can be accessed. These are so unforgiving that a few wrong passwords prompt a total format, even a burnout sometimes.

Intel wants to get people to stop using passwords anyway

Technically, Chipzilla wants to make it unnecessary to ever use number/letter codes again by providing what it thinks is a better alternative.

We've already covered it actually. In a nutshell, Intel expects that computers will come with full biometric security systems starting in 2015.

The main element would be facial recognition. Using a 3D camera, the computer will scan you and determine whether you own it or have a user account. In addition, there will be a system to read your fingerprint and even detect your voice.

The chip giant believes that this will be both a more convenient and more secure way of logging on to your computer.

How this might be circumvented

Hackers could just slip through the cracks of the OS or security system and “fool” the camera into thinking it scanned you by digging up the initial one and doing the equivalent of hanging the picture in front of a security cam.

I'm pretty sure a virus could be made that could do this, though I admit all I know about hacking is what I've read online and in magazines. Would this be easier to do than cracking a password? Probably not, but that doesn't mean that passwords should or could be pushed aside any time soon.

Will you feel comfortable abandoning password protection?

Personally, I don't password-lock my computer because I live alone, and I don't work with critical trade secrets or anything of that nature. But if I did, I'd never really discard them. More likely I'd use both the biometric / 3D scanning system and passwords together, for extra safety. Both at PC login and on websites.

On the other hand, if a PC with this capability landed in my lap somehow, I would probably appreciate the ease of logging in when all I have to do is take my seat in front of the monitor. I'd probably enable the option to password-unlock it too though, just in case I get my face injured somehow and can't access my stuff that way for a while.

Not a very pleasant thought, but it's the same logic that made me enable pin-based unlocking on my smartphone even though I can and do use the fingerprint sensor on the back.