CELL PHONES BECOMING AN INSECURE SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE !

ARE CELL PHONES BECOMING AN INSECURE SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE ?

Many great feature are being offered to modernize how technology can be used to provide identification and authentication methods for  drivers license, banking and many business transactions. I have been  skeptical of how much dependence has been moved to the mobile device that it can become a single point of failure when it is not available.

There are so many mobile apps that require a cell phone to perform secondary Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) which create a bottleneck if the phone gets disabled. This I have experienced when forced to perform a banking transaction in the USA while of travel in India. I was forced to buy an international service plan from the cellphone provider for $20/day to get the MFA code to merely log into my account to perform 2  transactions on 2 different days.

In addition to the dependency of mobile devices, it also presents a greater security risk when a person can be physically overpowered to obtain their biometric information like thumb print or facial picture to bypass the security that are being creatively offered to protect the consumer. This can actually become the easiest insecure method to override the enhanced security offered on the cellphone.

It is not the smartest security method to use the phone as the only other device for all authentication needs. Instead a complementary email authorization method should be offered by all systems to keep the identification methods secure and convenient depending on the situation and type of application.

The smart phone is being used to make the people dumb. It is mostly about farming our personal information and storing it insecurely to sell it to the highest buyer for commercial use or to be held at randsom by any cyber criminal who manages to steal it.

I am open to hear our other opinions in this matter to understand the benefits of putting total human dependence on our mobile devices.

- Sammy Benjamin - sammybenjamin@gmail.com

Images obtained by  Internet Google search.

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