Intel's Authenticate to improve digital security

Intel has created a new way to authenticate users to login instead of the usual username/password combination.  By entering a PIN, password, making a unique gesture, using a fingerprint or several other menial tasks, Intel’s new “Authenticate” system makes users complete several authentication tasks. By completing these tasks, they combine several unique and secure methods to make sure that the person logging into a system is who they are.

            Intel has gathered information of user patterns of how they create passwords, how they are broken and ways to improve password technology without further complicating it for the end user. In the end, Intel has made a few assumptions about passwords, technology and combined their findings to create a new technology to aid login security.

Intel is doing all of these things based on an assumption that a remote entity cannot also reproduce these logins. It follows the same principal as a Captcha.  Computers are good at interpreting very clear and crisp images, guessing numbers and words, and performing certain actions.  As this is such, passwords need a certain level of security so that they cannot be maliciously obtained by a program.  However, they are only good at these things in a certain capacity. The shorter a password, the more common it is, or the easier it is to guess, the less secure it is.  By combining several kinds of authentication, Intel removes those three concerns as the likely hood of a computer being able to accurately duplicate any of those three, is extremely unlikely.

           

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3024314/security/intels-authenticate-tech-brings-simple-but-powerful-security-to-skylake-chips.html