Storing all of your passwords on your computer might be convenient and easy, but it’s definitely not secure. The EyeLock Myris is also a convenient and easy way to store your passwords, but it’s exceptionally secure.

The small USB-powered device is a handheld iris scanner that keeps your passwords safe using biometric data. Every iris is different – your eyes are kind of like fingerprints, only more unique. The iris scanner can store the unique biometric iris data of up to five people, so everyone in your household can ditch the typed passwords.

The Myris takes a split-second image of your eyes whenever you want to sign into your computer or access a password-protected program or website. It scans more than 240 points of your irises in less than a second, providing a government-grade encrypted signature that keeps all of your data secure.

When you program the Myris, you can make your actual passwords as complex as you like to protect them from hackers – but there’s no need to remember them. The device stores them on-board, not on your computer, so they are well and truly secure. And the chances of getting a false positive from someone else holding the Myris up to their own eyes? About one in 1.5 million.

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Taking your vitamins just got a little more serious. Motorola has unveiled their “vitamin authentication tablet” in an attempt to take online security to the next level. The tablet was introduced at the D11 Conference in May 2013. Regina Dugan, Motorola’s senior vice president for advanced technology and products, told Wired UK that this innovation is her “first super power.”

“After 40 years of advances in computation, we’re still authenticating basically the same way we did years ago,” she says. The tablet, which has been approved by the FDA, is triggered by stomach acids to put out an 18-bit ECG-like signal, turning your body into a living, breathing password.

Although Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside says it won’t be shipping anytime soon, smart pills have been used previously to alert patients when to take their medication and to give doctors information straight from your body. Does this tablet remind anyone else of this scene?

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If you’ve ever been the victim of a hacker, you know how devastating it can be. According to Google’s security team, passwords are just not sufficient protection for today’s citizens of the web. They say that the future of internet security lies in devices like the one above. Yubico makes a line of small USB cryptographic cards; in short, they’re like car keys and they’re small enough to fit on your key ring like actual keys. Rather than punching in passwords for every website, in the future we’ll all simply plug our USB “keys” in to start surfing.

But internet security in the near future might be even simpler than that. In their paper on the subject, the Google team indicated that security devices might take the form of a ring worn on the finger. A simple tap on the computer with the be-ringed finger would be all that is needed to authenticate a user. Another option involves a user’s smartphone acting as a wireless authentication device. As of now, Google is working on building a protocol that will allow users to authenticate via a device, but until plenty more websites and software companies get on board with the new standard, we’re stuck remembering passwords and typing them in over and over.

The post Death of the Password: Future ‘Net Security Lies in Hardware first appeared on Gajitz.

We all know the rules for creating secure passwords: don’t use your name or the names of pets or family members, don’t use your birth date or any word in the dictionary, always incorporate numbers and capital letters, and stay away from typical strings of words like “iloveyou” or “letmein.” But regardless of these rules being common knowledge, recent large-scale password hacks and leaks have revealed that most of us still use these ridiculously-easy-to-guess passwords.

A device called the Aladdin seeks to solve this problem by taking the onus of memorization off of the user. The Aladdin is a small USB keyboard that you keep on your key chain – just like your front door key – and plug into your computer to gain access to every password-protected account you use.

It works by generating long, random alpha-numeric passwords and storing them until it’s plugged into your computer (or a smartphone or tablet, as long as the device accepts USB keyboards). Then it enters the passwords into the appropriate accounts as needed so you never have to mess with it. For added security, you can type additional characters or delete some characters or even plug in two or more Aladdins sequentially to create passwords that are even harder to guess.

The Aladdin is currently seeking funding for a first production run on IndieGoGo. Supporters can get their own starting at $20. For a device that’s way more secure than the old-school method of writing your passwords down (another major security sin), it seems an extremely reasonable price to pay.

The post USB Key Remembers All of Your Computer Passwords For You first appeared on Gajitz.

You know you aren’t supposed to use the same password for every website, but it’s basically impossible to remember a bunch of well-chosen passwords. Instead of writing them all down on sticky notes around your computer (which is not entirely secure, of course), Ford has a pretty smart way to log you into all of your favorite websites with hardly any effort on your part. The Ford KeyFree Login is an app created by as a clever marketing tie-in for Ford’s keyless locking and unlocking technology.

With the app, your web accounts – like Facebook, Twitter and Gmail – are unlocked as soon as you and your mobile phone get close to your computer. Then when you walk away, the accounts are logged out and locked automatically. The scope of the app is quite narrow, though: it only works with Google Chrome running MacOS. And there are, of course, some security concerns involved with any app that stores your passwords. The app has already launched in France but is expected to go global soon.

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