© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023
S. J. NielsonDiscovering Cybersecurityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-9560-1_2

2. Authentication Technology

Seth James Nielson1  
(1)
Austin, TX, USA
 
Chapter Quick Start Guide

In this chapter, you will learn about how parties (typically human parties) can be identified to a computer system. This process is called authentication. For identifying a human party, there are three common approaches: something you know (like a password), something you have (like your phone), or something you are (like a fingerprint). Although it is popular to talk about passwords as “weak” and other mechanisms like biometrics as “strong,” every approach has pros and cons, strengths ...

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