Security is at an all-time high, especially in our mobile society and how can we make certain that the proper person is actually the one trying to gain access to our accounts. Every day on the news, we hear about major companies being hit and millions of credit card numbers and personal information being compromised. This is especially scary as our society becomes more mobile and we start carrying less cash – we want to use our debit cards or to pay for everything and now, smartphone manufacturers are beginning to offer ways to eliminate even the need for a debit card by using your smartphone to pay for most everything.
Biometrics is the newest buzzword in the field of mobile devices, and it refers to the quantifiable data (or metrics) related to human characteristics and traits. Biometric identifiers are the distinctive, measurable characteristics used to label and describe individuals, via fingerprint, face recognition, DNA, iris or retina recognition, etc. Samsung has long studied the eye, and from patents they have filed over the past year, show an extreme interest in iris scanning. That technology may be a ways off yet, so they opted to include a fingerprint sensor in their new flagship, the Galaxy S5. Samsung’s senior vice president Rhee In-jong said, “We’re looking at various types of biometric [mechanisms] and one of things that everybody is looking at is iris detection.” “We, as a market leader, are following the market trend.
He does expect this type of “iris detection” to hit the high-end devices first, but they will certainly bring some type of biometric security to low-end models as well – perhaps Samsung will opt for the iris detection in high-end devices and simply include the fingerprint sensor on the lower-end devices – but some sort of security for lower cost Samsung phones is in the works.
Rhee, who is also in charge of the Samsung KNOX security solution for business enterprise and is working hard to have more companies adopt KNOX as their security ‘go to’ when it comes to corporate security. He says that there are already 87 million devices with KNOX embedded, but there are only 1.8 million activity using KNOX – mostly in regulated industries such as banks, healthcare and financial companies. Rhee said that Samsung is hoping the demand for KNOX will “trickle down” to other industries once it is proven itself in the more regulated areas. The more companies that buy into their KNOX security system, the more Galaxy S devices could be sold – either through companies buying the devices to give to their employees or the employee themselves purchasing one for both home and business use.
Please hit us up on our Google+ Page and let us know what your feelings are on scanners of any sort, the KNOX system, or if you are in favor of making purchases using you smartphone…as always, we would love to hear from you.