Are you willing to swap passwords for biometric data?

Image: Wavesforms by Mikael Altemark via Flickr

"At the Tech Crunch Disrupt conference in September, Google's top security executive, Heather Adkins, declared that passwords are dead. And that's straight from a founding member of the security team at Google, home to 425 million email accounts," reports NPR News.

Adkins says startups tying their future to passwords might as well give up now, given how much work it takes to keep customers' passwords secure.

But if passwords are a thing of the past, what will replace them?

Biometric Prints

Wall Street is betting on biometrics. Now that Apple is adding a fingerprint sensor to its newest iPhone, companies that make similar technology have seen their share prices jump. And industry analysts say the market for fingerprint scanners could top $10 billion in the next five years.

Other biometrics companies are looking more competitive as well. Take one of Apple's partners, Nuance Communications, a voice recognition company. You've probably heard their technology if you've called an airline or reserved a hotel room — particularly if you've heard, "Your call may be monitored or recorded for quality purposes."

Nuance Communications is gathering data to improve its voice-recognition technology. The goal is to eventually do away with the whole username and passcode business altogether, says Robert Weideman, one of the company's executive vice presidents.

Today's Question: Are you willing to swap passwords for biometric data?

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