Face Off

What will they think of next? NEC, a Japanese computer manufacturer, will be releasing two new laptops in late September with the latest in computer authentication: Facial Recognition. That’s right! These consumer laptops will use facial recognition to gain access to the machine. Insert technical jargon here: “NEC’s software, called "NeoFace," is a biometric system that uses a combination of eye zone extraction and facial recognition to identify the computer’s user. To program the system, a user sets up a profile with three photographs of their face. Then when a user tries to log on, an integrated 2.0 megapixel camera scans their facial characteristics.”

English please! What that was saying was that computer has a tiny camera that measures different parts of your face and uses those distances to come up with a “geometric” password. They say the system is smart enough to perform accurate matching even when people wear glasses and hats, have different haircuts or facial hair, and show different facial expressions.

What does this mean to me in the security field? I’ll tell you. We’ve all cracked a few passwords in our day. Fingerprint scanners are nice, but it’s still fairly easy to get someone’s print and make a cast of their finger. But how in the world do you get a hold of someone’s face!? Unless you go Sean Archer/Castor Troy on someone, this is incredibly secure.

Check out the full article here.

Intel's VPro Technology

On Monday, August 27th, Intel rolled out it’s new Vpro security measures. The new processor and chipset bundle, dubbed the Weybridge package, are set to be released today offering corporate businesses a better solution for information security. They also plan to release the Vpro bundle for notebooks early in the first quarter of ’08.

But what does the Vpro package offer the corporations that decide to pick it up? Intel claims that network managers will be able to send patches and security updates throughout the network automatically with this bundle. They also boast that these machines will be able to be managed remotely and instructed to perform certain tasks without much additional software. The Vpro also uses a form of virtualization to run certain security programs in a more secure area on the hard drive. There are time based filters in place to help detect attacks and patterns of any persons who may be trying to attack the network. What stood out the most to me was that instead of being stored in software, network security is given a space on certain pieces of the hardware to be stored. Since it is being stored on the hardware, it becomes much more difficult for an attacker to compromise this information.

Intel does not intend to phase out other security programs, but has designed these programs to work with some of the fairly common consumer/corporate security tools. HP and Dell have already joined forces with Intel to help bring this technology out to the general public, but a date was not given as to when we should expect it. In the meantime, rest a bit easier knowing that Intel is thinking ahead and attempting to protect your data in a more effective manner.