Beyond passwords: 5 new ways to authenticate users

You feel like checking your bank account online.

You go to your bank Web site, enter your user name and password, and then are asked, via a dropdown menu, several questions relating to the most memorable family dinner of your life.

Slideshow: A look at some fresh ways to make sure the right people are gaining entry to a Web site

Who was there? How old were you? What type of food was served? If you answer correctly to this set of questions, you're authenticated. Next, to demonstrate that you're not on a phish site, the bank's authentication software displays a special phrase that you preselected, such as chicken-fried steak or mom's apple pie.

According to a start-up called Cogneto, this type of software-based authentication is far more user friendly and cost effective than hardware-based authentication methods.

At first signup, customers enter, via dropdown menus, information based on their life, either their favorite trip, dinner, party or other event. Cogneto's Unomi software does the rest. The next time the customer logs in, the software not only provides safe authentication, it puts customers in a good frame of mind by prompting them to recall a pleasant personal experience. (For a quick demo, see >>.)

Unomi represents one of the many new biometric/cognitive methods of authentication that have emerged to help banks and other online businesses deal with new regulations or with the general need to tighten up online security in the wake of so many data breaches.