Regarding biometric authentication systems, do you envision a future dominated by fingerprint, iris scan, or voice authentication?
Saito: Yes, I think the area of biometrics has already become an integral part of our lives. Whether it is scanning your fingerprints at Narita customs, scanning your palm veins for large ATM transactions, voice authentication for computer access or even iris scanning for at-a-distance identification of people, biometrics has started making everyone’s daily lives easier, more convenient and more secure. This is an important concept, because many people believe that just making things more secure (e.g., using longer passwords that change every 6 months) is actually not secure if you also don’t make things more convenient and easier to use (otherwise people end up writing passwords on Post-It notes—the least secure option). Furthermore, biometrics is one of the only technologies that one can use to positively authenticate someone. This will become more important in the increasingly online world of the Internet. Finally, this type of technology is not only useful for authentication but fo
