This article in Newsfactor reports that Google is ready to implement persistent identity in Android devices exposed as a Trust API. Using the device sensors, likely to include microphone, camera and accelerometer, Google will implement persistent identity, a capability Mercator predicted would be in market by 2017:
“Next month, several large financial institutions are set to begin testing a Trust API (application program interface) that uses machine intelligence for user authentication, Dan Kaufman, director of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, said at the Google I/O developer conference last week.
Depending on the success of those tests, the Trust API is expected to become generally available to Android developers by the end of this year, he said.
Authentication by Face Detection
Project Abacus was the vision of Deepak Chandra, who until recently was head of mobile authentication at Google, Kaufman said. (Chandra’s LinkedIn profile indicates he recently became director of engineering at Addepar, a financial technology company that — like Google — is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif.)
“We have a phone and these phones have all these sensors in them,” Kaufman said, explaining the idea behind the project. “Why couldn’t it just know who I was so I don’t need a password?”
While Kaufman didn’t offer information about what kinds of personal details the Trust API would use to verify a user’s identity, research papers published by Chandra earlier this year seem to offer some clues. For example, a study published in March that was written by Chandra along with researchers from Rutgers and the University of Maryland described how to provide continuous authentication through “partial face detection” via a smartphone’s front-facing camera.”
Given the volume of User IDs and Passwords that have been stolen and released into the wild, finding a trusted mechanism that eliminates passwords must be a top priority for government and businesses alike. Mercator expects that persistent identity will ultimately deliver a degree of identity confidence that is sufficient for most consumer financial activities.
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
Read the full story here
