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Polarized Screens to Hide Sensitive Data
NiugMan writes "NewScientist.com reports that Iizuka Denki Kogyo, a Tokio-based tech company has developed a monitor which appears to be blank if you stare at it with your eyes. Only by wearing a pair of polarised glasses you see stuff on it. The idea is to protect sensitive data from unauthorised personnel. Please take your special glasses with you when you take a coffee-break."
Then what? Nice idea, too bad it's been done for the past 10 years.
It can be defeated with 3-d glasses?
How about normal, polarized sunglasses and someone who can rotate their head?
Me thinks someone spent too much on research for this one.
Now you have to find a way so that your data can't show up on a normal monitor and you've got an effective defence, Aganst at least the low end script kiddie type hacker that has trouble affording pricy hardware upgrades.
Never Underestimate A Human Being
As others have pointed out, polarizing filters are so common that there's no security here.
It's like locking your house with a skeleton key.
Why not insert noisy frames between real ones and just synchronize the glasses so that they filter out the garbage frames? Why not just have the screen in the glasses?
Working in the IT Dept. of a bank, I can see how this could possibly appeal to the decision makers in the bank, and the industry at large.
Privacy is big in banking. Bigger than big. There is nothing more important that people's money, and there are enough federal guidelines and regulations on the subject to choke a horse. People can argue about the importance of their kids, cars, and homes, but if a bank employee makes a mistake and suddenly your financial information is stolen or made public, you've got one hell of a lawsuit, and one severely ill person on your hands.
While the technology does seem a bit silly in its inception, and beating this security measure is a moderately difficult at best, what security guard or bank personnel is not going to notice the strange looking individual with 3-D glasses on and a terrible case of tilting-head looking over the shoulder of a CSR or teller.
Of course it's beatable, and of course it's not going to make sense in your average office environment. But I'll tell you right now that there is nothing better than this, that I can think of, that has come along in terms of blocking people from looking over the shoulder of bank employees. Sure there are vertical-blind-like shadded screens, where the information is only viewable when looking directly at the monitor (and we employ those as well), but this again is foilable by a person's mere position. If the employee gets up for coffee, a smoke, whatever, the information the screen is still viewable by anyone with a direct line of sight.
This technology can prevent the average person from seeing what's on an employee's screen. The "average person" is about 95% of all bank customers. The "average person" won't really care how it works, won't want to know why it works, but I'll tell ya, the "average person" will feel a 100 times more confident in his/her financial institutions commitment to security and privacy when using this technology, even if it can be foiled by 3D-glasses or expensive shades.
When you combine this technology with the common sense of "closing all applications when leaving your desk," a financial instutition's employee's desk becomes 10 times safer than it was originally, and that's a big step. I'm certain that the larger financial institutions out there (Citibank, et al) would be glad to show off the new technology and tout about its security, even if it can be foiled by the strange looking man wearing $3 3D glasses.