Tag: authentication

Biometrics for authentication: how the future of technology is going to change our lives

Posted on by [email protected]_84

Fortune tellers of old would, for a small fee, read your palm and attempt to predict your future. Today, there is another kind of palm reading, powered by technology, which seeks to confirm your identity. Your palm is unique: that particular combination of veins, lines and creases is like no other. That makes it a prime candidate for use in the field of biometrics, joining other techniques such as fingerprint, facial and voice recognition. Your palm could be used to usher you through passport control, enter the office, pay for goods and much else. But as these biometric techniques accumulate, concern is growing about weak security and the long-term effect on personal privacy.

Such systems may be convenient, but are they wise?

Palm ID is already being used in a few places around the world, including Jeju International Airport in South Korea. But last week, global giant Amazon

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Microsoft’s Azure AD authentication outage: What went wrong

Posted on by [email protected]_84

azureadoutage.jpg

Credit: Microsoft

On September 28 and September 29 this week, a number of Microsoft customers worldwide were impacted by a cascading series of problems resulting in many being unable to access their Microsoft apps and services. On October 1, Microsoft posted its post-mortem about the outages, outlining what happened and next steps it plans to take to head this kind of issue off in the future.

Starting around 5:30 p.m. ET on Monday, September 28, customers began reporting they couldn’t sign into Microsoft and third-party applications which used Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for authentication. (Yes, this means Office 365 and other Microsoft cloud services.) Those who were already signed in were less likely to have had issues. According to Microsoft’s report, users in the Americas and Australia were likely to be impacted more than those in Europe and Asia.

Microsoft acknowledged it was a service update targeting an internal

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