Heartbeat could be your new password

Your pet dog or pet cat will definitely be able to recognize your presence when you come home after a long day at work, but can your cold-hearted computing devices do so? Not quite yet, although there seems to be advancements made in this aspect where one’s gadgets can identify the correct users through the measuring of one’s heartbeats via fingertips. The heartbeat ID will be embedded into a phone or tablet, meaning unauthorized users will be locked out and there is no amount of brute force hacking that will unlock said device, in theory, at least.

Foteini Agrafioti, an engineer at the University of Toronto, said of his technology developed by Bionym, “ECG biometrics identifies people by their cardiac rhythm.Not just their heart rate, but the actual shape of their heartbeat.”

After having read all of the above, perhaps the French Central Bank might want to look into introducing such a system in select parts of their security setup instead of just falling back on “123456” as their password, no?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets