We Want The Airwaves Secure

Security For The Airwaves

As I keep mentioning in postings on this blog site, Smartphones are truly the de facto standard of our lives.  Lose it, and we are paralyzed.  In fact, it has even come to the point now our lifestyle is being judged by the type of Smartphone we have in our possession.  This can even be likened to the kind of you drive.  Now for me, I live a very simple lifestyle.  So that means, I drive a very basic car (a Honda Civic 2003) and a very simple wireless device (the most basic phone Verizon had to offer at the time). 

And as the use of Smartphones proliferate well into the future, so will the demand for increased security.  In fact, just today, I came across a market research report which claims that the security market (this is an all inclusive grouping) will reach $356 Million by the year of 2014.  This report cites a number of obvious factors for the explosion in this market capitalization, which include:

*An increase in the growth of mobile employees (especially those who telecommute, the road warrior, and people who have the great benefit of working from home full time);

*The strong interest in the security protocol of SMS OTP, here is a brief definition of it:  “A one-time password (OTP) is a password that is valid for only one login session or transaction. OTPs avoid a number of shortcomings that are associated with traditional (static) passwords. The most important shortcoming that is addressed by OTPs is that, in contrast to static passwords, they are not vulnerable to replay attacks. This means that, if a potential intruder manages to record an OTP that was already used to log into a service or to conduct a transaction, he or she will not be able to abuse it since it will be no longer valid. On the downside, OTPs are difficult for human beings to memorize. Therefore they require additional technology in order to work.”  (SOURCE:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_password)

*Increased demand of Smartphones by the so called “non traditional sectors”;

*The rise of cloud based services and SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings;

*An exponential increase in demand for access to secure networks such as financial websites and corporate intranets.

But despite these thirst quenching demands, this market research does find one variable which could impede the anticipated growth rate for mobile security by 2014.  And believe it or not, it has to do with Voice Recognition.  Although when compared to the other Biometric Technologies out there, Voice Recognition still does not yet have a big piece of the pie in the overall market.  But when you look at it in individual market segments, such as Wireless and Smartphones, the demand for it is strong.  Voice Recognition is very easy to use, and takes just a matter of literally seconds for the user to enroll themselves into it as a means to protect their Smartphone.  So, this finding totally surprises me. 

True, Voice Recognition does have its fair share of flaws and limitations just like anything else in life, the technology has advanced to the point where even the largest of the financial institutions worldwide are using Voice Recognition for customers to trade financial instruments on the phone, without the assistance of a broker.  And really Voice Recognition is very easy to use when compared to other Biometric Technologies out there.  So in my view as a technical writer, I firmly believe that Voice Recognition will continue to play a huge role in wireless security.

The only other true alternative is Fingerprint Recognition, and people don’t want to fumble around with extra steps in order to secure and use their Smartphone.  With Voice Recognition, simply flip open your phone, speak your voice, and voila, you are verified.  I am going to have to really take a deeper look at this study to find out why Voice Recognition is considered an “impediment”, when it will only fuel the growth for easy and quick and security.  Finally, this market research was conducted by an organization known as “Research and Markets”, and the formal title of the research is “Phone-based Authentication Market in North America 2010-2014”. 

Comments

[Elgart Levingston]

I totally understand your feeling. Times now are based on what gadget you have or most specifically what kind of smartphone you have. Completely technology based world.