The Eyes Have It

Imagine how much more secure your passwords and PIN codes might be if you just stare for half a second at each number or letter - no typing required. That's the idea behind EyePassword, a new infrared technology developed by computer scientist Manu Kumar and colleagues at Stanford University. By tracking the movement of your pupils, the EyePassword knows which characters you're looking at, thereby making it much more difficult for a lurker or hacker to steal your security codes.

Source: "Safeguards: To Hoodwink Thieves, Let Your Eyes Do the Typing," BusinessWeek, September 17, 2007.

Risky Business

The more mobile your work environment, the more likely you use e-mail and instant messaging to send confidential information, according to a Trend Micro survey of 1,600 corporate computer users in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. While you may not think you’re taking big risks, the truth is your online behavior is a much bigger threat to corporate security than that of your desktop-chained colleagues.

Fifty-eight percent of U.S. laptop users connecting to the Internet outside the corporate firewall reported sending confidential information via e-mail, compared to 42 percent of those using the
company network. And about 77 percent of U.S. mobile workers reported receiving spam at work, versus only 68 percent of those on company networks. Trend Micro, a provider of security software, says the numbers are about the same for users in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

Source: W. David Gardner, “Mobile PC Users Take More Risks Than Desktop Users, Survey Says,” InformationWeek, August 28, 2007.

NEWS FLASH: I’ll Read This… and This… and This

Americans now sample their news buffet-style — an online story here, a TV report there. According to a McKinsey online survey of 2,100 consumers, respondents check out as many as 16 news brands every week across five media platforms — TV (broadcast and cable networks), Internet, magazines, newspapers and radio. While television and Internet content were described as being the most useful (by 45 and 26 percent, respectively), that’s due
to the convenience of those media rather than accuracy or quality. The survey broke down 75 percent of those using online sites into three categories — citizen readers, news lovers and digital cynics, with the latter most likely to check out blogs and comedy news programs like “The Daily Show” instead of picking up a newspaper.

Source: Andre Dua and Liz Hilton Segel, “What Consumers Want From Online News,” The McKinsey Quarterly, August 2007.

Coming Clean Online

Online transactions depend upon reputation. But how do you know if those you’re doing business with are who they say they are? With no centralized ratings system, a person with a stellar reputation on Amazon.com may score just average on eBay. To help you manage your reputation — and investigate those strangers with whom you’re interacting — a startup in Waltham, Mass., called TrustPlus, is releasing a new product that gathers information about a user centrally and then displays it online wherever that person interacts or conducts business.

TrustPlus users will be able to rate each other on a scale of six levels of trustworthiness, along with explaining how they first came in contact with each other. TrustPlus can be installed on your browser or downloaded as a badge for you to display on your Web site.

Source: Erica Naone, “Managing Your Reputation Online,” Technology Review, September 10, 2007.