Google To Institute Two-Factor Authentication

According to this article in TechCrunch, Google is planning on rolling out an optional two-factor authentication to it's Google Apps Premiere, Education, and Government edition customers and then to the rest of us in the coming months. Two-factor authentication requires not only a password but also a six digit verification code that you've created when turning the extended security feature on. Many large business already employ such measures, usually relying on hardware dongles to generate and display random temporary codes, Google's system won't require the additional hardware and will be particularly handy if you access the companies services (gmail, docs, etc.) from your mobile device.

TechCrunch also says "Google has built a ‘Google Authenticator’ application for Android, the iPhone, and Blackberry — fire up the application, and it will give you the six digit verification code that you enter back into your browser (the system can also send you a SMS message or give you the code via voice call)."

Makes sense that we would want such authentication now that we are moving more and more into the cloud, and accessing our account via multiple devices via hot spots and various other networks. I think I like it!

United Arab Emirates To Block Blackberry E-mail

The U.A.E. has indicated that it will begin to block Blackberry e-mails and text messages in October, citing security concerns. It's a twist of fortune for Research in Motion who scored a big win when security officials in the US allowed then President Elect Obama to keep his Blackberry but has run a fowl of the Arab states. The issue that the U.A.E. and other countries in the Persian Gulf region are having is that the highly encrypted messages make it difficult for government to monitor communications.  

“The U.A.E. has never been a place that offered much in the way of electronic privacy,” said Jim Krane, author of “City of Gold,” a history of Dubai. “The government makes no secret that it monitors electronic communication, including text messages, phone calls and e-mail. The revelation that secure BlackBerry data is frustratingly out of the government’s reach only confirms this.”

The burning question for me now is how will the stand be viewed by consumers here in the Western world? I would have to think that this is a plus for RIM here, but then again how many of us make our decisions based on such criteria?

Credit: New York Times

Biometric ATMs Appearing in Europe

Hitachi has produced a finger tip scanner that scans patterns of micro veins beneath the surface of the skin rather than finger prints and has managed to get the scanners installed in ATM machines in Warsaw, Poland.  Poland's cooperative BPS bank claims to be the first bank in Europe to install biometric identity verification on it's ATMs.

Hitachi claims the likelihood of a false positive is about 1 in 1 million, or roughly as accurate as an iris scan which is generally accepted as the most secure of methods to date. Perhaps I watch too many spy movies but the first thing that came to my mind was quickly dispelled as I read further in CNN's article, "And before you ask, no -- it doesn't work with fingers that have been chopped off,"  said Peter Jones, Hitachi's head of security and solutions in Europe. (Admit it, you were thinking it too!)

I hadn't realized that Poland was so forward thinking but Jone's goes on to say "It's no surprise that Poland is the first in Europe. They are one of the most proactive at addressing the challenges of the information age. When they host the EU presidency in 2012, they want to say to the world: 'Look at what we've achieved.'"

May 31 - Quit Facebook Day

There are a handful of high profile IT celebrities who are vowing to, or who have already, quit Facebook in protest of the perceived lack of interest (I'll give them some measure of reasonable doubt) by the company in keeping it's users personal information secure.  In addition there was recently a report of a leaked Mark Zuckerberg text conversation from the early days of Facebook that made light of the type of data that users where supplying the site, this has raised many eyebrows. 

In further protest a group of users have declared May 31st as "Quit Facebook Day", however I think the majority of Facebook's 400 million users seem to be either oblivious of the fact that their data is not necessarily safe in Facebook's hands or they are just not concerned. Regardless, I am doubtful that this movement will gather enough traction to put the site in real jeopardy, though it has prompted the company to respond with changes to the site allowing users some measure of opting out. Word is that it's only because of an internal uprising by Facebook employees that these changes where implemented. Personally I typically don't feed that much information to the site, other than feeds from this blog, my twitter account, or recently an experiment with foursquare...  I have to say that I am a little torn between what I think is the right course of action for me and the real advantages of belonging to the site, it has it's merits. 

Any of you plan on quitting?