Digital security requires more than a PIN code when the information being requested and transmitted is sensitive. This is particularly true for military personnel, as NBCNews explains. The Emerging Technologies Directorate of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) at the Department of Defense (DOD) has been testing smartphone technology that is difficult to outsmart.
The prototype smartphone can determine if the user matches the correct profile to enable the phone to unlock itself.
Profile information can include a scan of facial characteristics, the user’s recent activities, the way in which the phone is held, and the phone’s location. These extra security measures require a deeper level of authorization than passwords and fingerprints, a level the military says it needs to keep soldiers, and data, safe.
Major Nikolaus Ziegler, working for DISA, has introduced these Assured Identity features that can be put in place when the clearance level for the information being shared warrants extra precautions. “There needs to be additional contextual and biometric factors that allow the device to validate who you are,” he said.
Although the DOD originally approached Apple with a request for a more secure military grade iPhone, Apple declined, according to NBCNews. The DOD went on to develop their own phone security measures allowing them better control over the data, and creating a product that may interest phone companies with its mass market appeal.
August 19, 2019
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