The recent spate of password hacks around the world shows that the problem of protecting important information is moving to another level. As the crackers become more sophisticated and bold, the attacks are likely to increase, which means we’ll all have to take more care with our password management and procedures. One weapon in the fight could be increased reliance on security tokens – physical implements which add to the conventional password/PIN security process.

The YubiKey NEO is one example of the kind of thing we could be using to protect our data in the future. The small USB key is also the world’s first NFC (near field communication) enabled token, which means that it only has to be waved in proximity of a reader in order to enable the data access which is required.

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The idea is we’ll be able to use these types of tokens with the upcoming generation of NFC cell phones, so that once the token and the phones are in proximity, access is allowed. We assume that two factor security ID access products will follow naturally, but for now the YubiKey system uses One time Password access or OTP, which is very secure.

The YubiKey NEO is available in early production form for $50.00 each from the company’s sales site, and there’s a test app on the Google Play Android app store.