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Mobile security fingerprint sensor patented by South Korean company

Julie Campbell | February 13, 2015

The business has developed a type of sensor that can be embedded beneath a display panel.

A new kind of technology that could make a considerable difference to mobile security has just been patented by a company in South Korea, marking what could potentially be a future turn in the direction being taken in fingerprint scanning on smartphones and other devices.

The technology allows the fingerprint sensor to be embedded underneath a smartphone’s display panel.

The company that has patented the technology, CrucialTec, has only just received the approval that it needed for the patent in question. According to reports, the company first filed for the patent back in 2012. This is an interesting development, as the announcement followed closely on the heels of one that revealed that Apple had filed to patent technology relating to fingerprint scanning in its own mobile security TouchID tech.

Apple’s patent showed that it was seeking to patent mobile security tech that would bring its scanner beneath its display.

Mobile Security - fingerprint Apple’s patent filing showed that the company has been trying to take its fingerprint scanner off its home buttons in order to add it under the display of the devices. This move would be an important one for Apple, as it would make it possible to make some considerable changes to the design of its various mobile devices, such as the iPhone.

It has not yet become evident whether or not the patents that have been filed by CrucialTec and by Apple are in any level of conflict with one another, but that will certainly be an important discovery as things move forward. Keeping in mind that CrucialTec is a supplier of fingerprint scanners for Huawei, the importance of these patents becomes even greater.

Huawei is among several of the lower end smartphone makers that have been cutting into the market share of the high end gadgets from Apple. It isn’t unlikely that this mobile security technology will start to send the companies into some intense legal action in order to ensure that they will be able to hang on to the technologies that they have sought to patent.

New Apple mobile security patent could send fingerprints to the cloud

JT | January 21, 2015

A new filing has been spotted that could bring the data from Touch ID to other devices via the cloud.

The US Patent and Trademark Office published a patent filing from Apple that could have to do with part of its mobile security feature that collects fingerprints in order to unlock devices and conduct other functions through certain iPhone models.

The filing was called “Finger biometric sensor data synchronization via a cloud computing device and related methods”.

The patent described a method of recording an individual’s fingerprints by way of the Touch ID mobile security sensor from Apple, so this information could then be uploaded to the cloud and synced with other Apple devices. The sensor necessary for Touch ID has been built into Apple technology in its smartphones since the iPhone 5S, and in the iPads that have been released since that time in 2013. The sensor allows a device owner to use his or her fingerprints in order to access the device. However, more recently, it also became an identity verification feature when making purchases through the new mobile wallet system, Apple Pay.

This potential change to the mobile security feature is meant to help to make the system more convenient.

Mobile Security - Cloud Technology Apple described in the patent filing that enrollment into Touch ID could potentially be “cumbersome for users in some instances, such as when multiple fingerprints, users and/or devices are used.” By synchronizing the process using a cloud based function, it would help to eliminate the need to re-register a device owner’s fingerprints on every device, in addition to the fingerprints of all of the other people who are to be given permission to access the iOS gadget.

At the time of the writing of this article, the Touch ID security page at Apple explained that “iOS and other apps never access your fingerprint data, it’s never stored on Apple servers, and it’s never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else.”

If that mobile security policy is to remain the same, it makes one wonder how this potential cloud synchronization technology could possible work, and how it could be safely applied in order to protect the data from the Touch ID feature.