Gadgetory

passwords are a necessary part of our digital lives but far from perfect often stolen forgotten and hacked Morris Chang an electrical and computer engineering professor at Iowa State University is developing verification technology that could improve upon passwords we all take the different experience or knowledge and when we come to the typing and has to do with our past experience gene or even our knowledge and those are different from the individual to individual passwords confirm identity when a user logs in initially but Chang's technology constantly monitors typing ensuring that the computer hasn't been hijacked to develop the tech further Chang has received a $500,000 grant from the Defense Department but is keystroke analysis more efficient than passwords you can have a fairly high false positive rate let's say you're typing and you want to finish your sentence and answer your cell phone or drink a cup of coffee that pattern could throw off your typing rate but the technology has advantages a biometric measurement can't be stolen and it doesn't require additional hardware anything that uses the technology is already available it's kind of a far lower cost of deployment because all it is a software and keystroke analysis could verify users as they bank or shop online in San Francisco I'm Sumi das cnet.com for CBS News