Tag: mobile security

Voicekey wins contract from UK government concerning development of new m-commerce platform

Voicekey, a developer of biometric security solutions, has been awarded a commercial contract from the United Kingdom’s Technology Strategy Board. The contract represents the second phase of a mobile commerce initiative in the United Kingdom. During the first phase, Voicekey was able to introduce new technologies and security features to the mobile space. The second phase will focus on the development of a market-ready mobile commerce solution that will be easily accessible to consumers as well as secure.

UK consumers are becoming more interested in comprehensive m-commerce services and platforms

Consumers throughout the United Kingdom have become very interested in the concept of mobile payments and purchasing products from merchants using only their mobile devices. Many consumers have encountered troubling problems with the mobile commerce platforms that they use on a regular basis, however. Lackluster security has put consumer’s financial information at risk of exploitation and poorly designed platforms have created an unfavorable experience for many people. The demand for easy to use, well developed, and secure platforms has been on the rise.

Merchants and consumers are somewhat reluctant to engage in the mobile commerce space

Voicekey aims to address that merchants and consumers have when it comes to mobile commerce. For consumers, accessibility has become a serious issue. Many platforms make use of NFC technology, but few people actually have the NFC-enabled mobile devices needed to use these platforms. For merchants, security is a major issue. Merchants are also somewhat uncertain about the potential revenue growth they could see by engaging mobile consumers more aggressively.

Platform expected to be equipped with biometric security technology but will not be based on NFC technology

Voicekey is expected to develop a platform that will address many of these issues. The platform is likely to make use of the company’s biometric security technology, alleviating some of the security concerns that merchants and consumers have. The platform is also expected to be more accessible to consumers without NFC-enabled devices. The platform may use NFC to some extent, but it will not be entirely based upon the technology.

Experts are saying that the popular photo sharing app is experiencing a lacking in privacy protection.

According to the complaints of a number of experts regarding the Snapchat app, the level of mobile security behind the application is greatly inadequate for protecting the privacy of its users.

Some now feel that the mobile app development team behind the app lacks the necessary understanding.

Among the most recent steps that the company has taken toward improving mobile security includes last week’s introduction of a CAPTCHA code verification. This is designed to help to ensure that all new subscribers are humans and not computer programs. It is important to avoid computer created accounts as these are common methods used by cybercriminals for the distribution of spam or to discover ways to grab personal information from other users of these types of mobile apps.

While the number of fake accounts may be reduced, it doesn’t mean that the mobile security is strong.

Although the CAPTCHA techniques can shrink the number of fake accounts that a service experiences, a graduate research assistant from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Steven Hickson, was able to easily hack into Snapchat despite its latest upgrades.

The CAPTCHA implementation at Snapchat was weak to the point that Hickson required under an hour on the mobile development of a computer program that would be able to trick the system with “100 percent accuracy”. Hickson explained that “They’re a very, very new company and I think they’re just lacking the personnel to do this kind of thing.”

In order to make sure that the potential user of the service is a human, the system selected by Snapchat involves having to choose the white ghost mascot of the company from among nine illustrations. Unfortunately, only the size and angle of the correct image is altered, making it simple for a computer to be able to recognize.

In order to stop a CAPTCHA mobile security system from being hacked, Hickson explained that “you want something that has a lot of variety in the answer,” adding that you essentially want one correct answer, but a vast array of different incorrect answers. This needs to be too complex for a computer to be able to solve while being quite obvious to a human.