With the success of Oscar-nominated movies such as The Imitation Game, breaking codes is suddenly quite sexy. Mind you, Aunty B would swear a feature-length film about limpet watching would be sexy – so long as it starred Benedict Cumberbatch.
You’d think we’d surely have come on leaps and bounds from the days when Alan Turing, pioneering mathematician and computer scientist, played his crucial role in decrypting German codes during the Second World War.
Alas, it seems not.
Our passwords are, in fact, not as secure as they once were. In days gone by, the only person on the planet who knew our computer login details was the mysterious Brian from IT: never seen by anyone in the office, he existed only as a disembodied and bored voice on the end of the phone.
Now, however, with the advent of social media, online shopping and cyber banking there’s much more sensitive information out there much more of the time – and we need a sturdier defence than Brian to protect it all.
So what are the alternatives?
Well, RBS and NatWest have recently allowed customers to use Apple’s fancy finger swiping password login system Touch ID to get into their banking App.
Some sceptics, however, say such biometric technology is flawed. It can be affected by wet hands (and we are in Scotland, after all!), cuts or – the biggest bogie of them all – software flaws.
This means we could be locked out at crucial moments: imagine finding an empty fridge and being unable to access your phone to order a late night take-away!
Any kind of biometric password also raises fears about our DNA and other biological data being stored and used against our will, or even recreated.
The logical option to improved security is a multi-tiered approach.
Traditional passwords currently have this in the form of added security questions, codes and even the annoying wee robot-voice woman.
Replace thoese with fingerprint recognition, pulse recognition and optic recognition and Bob’s wur Aunty.
Yes, just like Minority Report, but without the plot twists and eyeballs in a bag – Toronto-based technology boffins Bionym have developed a measuring system known as your “electro-cardiogram”. No, not a heated cardigan, a system that recognises the unique elements of your heartbeat.
Investors have staked $14 million to bring the wrist-worn device, christened the Nymi, to market. The investment will enable Bionym to produce an initial production run to meet 10,000 pre-orders already in the bag.
Bionym has announced it will make 10,000 Nymi wrsitbands.
Bionym says its system is safer than using your fingerprints and it could be used to replace ID cards, phone and computer logins or even replace house and car keys.
Before we enter this world of hi-tech password engineering, the password still has a role to play. So until then we must stop making it so easy to guess!
Use a mixture of upper, lower and special case characters, and at least eight.
Your first pet’s name and mother’s maiden name are so 1999.
Don’t use a big, high-fallution’ word stolen from a dictionary, either, as smart hacking software is more likely to throw this up as a result.
Finally, as advocated by astronomer and author Clifford Stoll: treat your password like your toothbrush – don’t let anybody else use it and get a new one every six months!
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