Factor Fight

Full Title or Meme

Which is the best Authentication Factor to use? "something you have" or "something you are"?

Context

Any Authentication Factor leads to the two primary problems.

• Security, primarily the security of Access to some protected resource
• Privacy, primarily the protection of a user's private data.

Problems

• All Authentication factors release personally identifiable information (PII) in order to complete their work. The stronger the Authentication, the more information is released.
• Biometrics, or "something your are" seems to be the best way to show Proof of Presence and is promoted by Brent Arsenault CISO at Microsoft. (2021-06-18)
• A Wired article "Facial Verification Won't Fight Fraud" encourages states in the US to switch to state issued IDs or "something you have".

References

Other material

• See the wiki page for Multi-factor Authentication
• And also the page for Facial Recognition.