Entity authentication and access control are particularly important components of security and appear in all of these categories. Through authentication you know who you are doing business with and can establish trust. Although passwords are universally used for entity authentication, the real question is whether their time is past. Passwords can easily be hacked, are often easy to guess and are frequently shared among co-workers. This token is synchronized with an access server that has the same time, seed value, and algorithm along with the user name.
Hardware tokens offer a 'zero footprint' solution.
Software tokens can be deployed onto PDAs such as the Palm Pilot, smart phones and also desktops. Also, tokens provide ease of use and portability since they can be used on-site for network or application login, for remote access, in combination with Virtual Private Networks, or for access to a secure web site. The certificate contains a user s name, organizational affiliation, dates of certificate validity, as well as the user s public key in addition to other user-definable extensions. However, the number of non Web-based applications that can recognize certificates are still limited, though this is rapidly changing. Biometrics depend on some characteristic that are unique to you personally, such as fingerprints, face prints, retinal pattern, iris pattern, or voiceprint.