Authentication
Digital services and the building out of an IoT ecosystem increasingly require that people and devices can be securely and reliably authenticated.
As we, and our objects, are increasingly connected to each other, to servers and the cloud, the threat level has increased. In order to combat this a variety of technology developers and service providers are employing a range of technologies to verify we are who we say we are and that we have validated access to our services, content and products.
This is an emerging sector and one where there is a heightened level of activity. Traditional means of PIN, password and username are no longer sufficient on their own. Increasingly a multi-factor and multi-channel approach is being employed to verify and approve access and connections across a variety of personal devices. This is being supplemented with digital certificates, private keys and encryption but there is another area, still developing, that needs to be addressed in a different manner.
Lower cost products require a different approach and a cross-section of the industry is considering how best to address these needs. Typical hardware solutions are not suitable and questions remain how smart card vendors, semiconductor manufacturers, software developers and platform providers can best position themselves to serve this market.
As adoption of cross-platform and multi-channel services grows, and consumers access their services and content across multiple devices identity, privacy and security will take a central role in the background as to how these are managed and provisioned.
Topics of interest include:
The replacement of username and password
Biometrics: key vendors and technologies
The development of FIDO Alliance and other standards and specifications
Authentication of devices in an IoT environment
Tokenization for authentication
e-Authentication for government, financial and enterprise
Contextual and behavioural authentication factors
Device fingerprinting