Hancock, chairman of the National Reliability and Interoperability Council Focus Group 2B, Cybersecurity, a council of advisers to the Federal Communications Commission, said that while he didn't want to be an alarmist, the state of Internet security is alarming.
Testifying before Congress in September on identity theft--currently favored by worm writers and phishers--Hancock focused on what could be done, principally in the area of identity management.
"Identity management of the future cannot be simplistic password methods of the past," he said. "It will need to incorporate advanced concepts such as biometrics and cryptographically sound methods to ensure the identity of a device, application, or individual is permitted to access data elements in databases and other information repositories."
That's essentially what Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said at the Microsoft IT Forum in Copenhagen earlier this week, where he addressed the "weakness of the password."
In his keynote address, Gates said that we cannot rely on passwords to protect health data, financial data, or records access. "Therefore, moving to biometric identification, and particularly in moving to smart cards, is a way that is coming," he predicted. "This is something that has been talked about for several years, but now we finally see the leading-edge customers taking that step."
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