Could Your Heartbeat Be Used To Protect Personal Data?

According to scientists from Binghamton University in New York, everyone has a unique heartbeat and that can be used for encrypting and decrypting personal data. Robert Capps, VP of Business Development at NuData Security commented below.

Robert Capps, VP of Business Development at NuData Security:

“As more business moves online, it’s gravely important for us to look for new and stronger methods to positively identify consumers, online. The use of bioinformatics for online human identification (such as heart rate, or body temperature, oxygen saturation, etc.) is a promising area of study, that would provide a unique way of strongly identifying individuals while reducing the opportunities for online criminals to impersonate a legitimate user.

“As with all data collected and compiled on individual consumers, there is a risk of theft and misuse. This is especially important when we are dealing with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, a US law that set data privacy and security standards for safeguarding medical information) protected data such as health diagnostics information.

“These types of solutions are promising and along with physical biometrics will have a place in strengthening online consumer identification as part of a multifactor response. In addition to these solutions, passive behavioural biometric technologies currently exist that are used to uniquely identify users. These solutions are passively collected and dynamically analysed and have the benefit of having an extremely limited shelf life of usefulness – making theft and successful reuse of raw behavioural signals nearly impossible.”