While everyone had their own agenda for attending RSA Information Security conference in San Francisco, our group was determined to get the most out of it. And the most we got. Exploring the latest advancement in Identification Technology, listening to Radware presentation about different levels of hacker protection was fun and exciting in some ways, but catching cash in the booth with the wind blowing in all directions was the most fun. Whey didn't anyone come up with this before?

This genius idea came from Radware company, which took a creative approach on marketing. Some of their ideas were not supported by the organizers, but I have to say… they were brave!

The first one was the one that fell through. They invited about 100 visitors, gave them t-shirts and asked them to chant it one by one. One said “I am a DOS attack, I cost you money, learn how to stop me…” – that was a red t-shit. The green one said… hmm… what did it say… “I am a legitimate user, I was blocked, learn how to help me”. We were all given matching sunglasses, kind of like in the martix, the movie. About a 100 people were supposed to march together and chant these words. We never actually chanted just walked around in a circle around booths.

That definitely attracted attention. But if that wasn't enough, Radware put a booth with flowing cash inside it.

You get what you catch. So much fun. Watch…

Oksana in the cash booth

Jeff in the cash booth

Among various advances in identification technology, one really attracted my attention. Palm Vein Recognition Technology. It takes pictures of the veins in your palm and matches it with the database, so next time you want to log in, you hover your palm over the reading device and it knows it is you.

The reps of this product explained to me that the picture of the veins inside one's palm is unique and is a better way to identify a person than finger prints or iris scan. It provides a better accuracy rate. But, of course, the accuracy rate varied depending who you asked. It ranged from 0.08% to as high as 10%. We are talking about false positives and false negatives. One rep representing finger print based technology said the iris scan is the worst one because it has the highest rate of false negatives. So a person would get denied access after scanning their eyes over and over again even though it is the right person.

I was wondering if the claim of any and all of these technologies is true. Is there one single metric within our human organism that doesn't change? I didn't think so. But if there is, it would violate the ground principle of this universe where nothing, and I mean NOTHING is stationary.