SBIR Phase I: Performance Identity

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project explores a new way to authenticate the identity of a remote computer user. While anonymity is often an attractive feature of online experience, it creates problems for both host and visitor. Anonymity impedes important functions: financial transactions, information access, secure decision-making, etc. Proof of identity enables such action. Existing technologies--passwords, signatures, electronic keys, digital certificates, physiological biometrics, etc.--all address this problem. Each is limited by constraints including hardware requirements, immobility, ease of forgery, ease of transfer, etc. The approach offers clear advantages. Like password protection, it requires no special hardware, it is readily deployed, and noninvasive. Passwords can be stolen, forgotten or compromised. Not so this technique. Like retinal scanning, it identifies individual humans, not secret keys. In this study, biometric data will be collected non-invasively from a broad population of computer users. Statistical analysis and signal processing techniques will be applied to isolate the metrics that reliably identify individuals. The applications of such technology are manifest. This will focuses on one significant application: online credit card authorization. It establishes milestones on the path to a system by which an authorized cardholder can easily make credit card purchases anywhere on the web, but nobody else can--even when having the actual card in hand.