Question Your World: Can Your Skull Act Like a Fingerprint?

Posted: May 31, 2017

Our technological world keeps growing at an exponential rate, thus digital security becomes a huge issue. Identity theft is one of the biggest concerns to high security locations. However, new ideas are being used all the time to ensure advances in keeping secured places safe. Move over fingerprints, it’s time to move the security industry ahead, literally a head, by using our skulls! So, can your skull act like your fingerprint?

Recently scientists have been busy working on new methods of protecting high security areas. Places like banks, government headquarters, and even private residences rely on the use of fingerprints as a safety mechanism. To gain access to such areas is very difficult, but not impossible. While fingerprint technology and advanced iris scanners already exist, there’s always room for upgrades, right? That’s exactly what a few scientists have been working on in Germany.

By sending a harmless ultrasonic frequency through the skull, they’re hoping to measure a unique vibration for every individual. The hope here is that the shape of the skull, the brain, fluids, and cartilage are arranged and organized differently for everyone, effectively acting like a fingerprint. This technology would be a great way to identify individuals and make it substantially more difficult to fake an identity.

Many biometric options are being explored by scientists to further enhance technological security measures. This new system is called SkullConduct and joins the ranks of other processes like vein patterns and brain wave collection. These options would make it significantly harder to gain access to an individual’s information unlike the most common form used today, passwords.

This is a brand new process and is still very much under testing. In fact, for this initial testing, the sample group used was a mere 10 individuals. The technology resulted in a 97% accuracy though, so perhaps with a larger sample size and a larger outcome, some of this stuff may make its way into our lives as future security measures continue to grow. Regardless, this is a pretty interesting new idea on how to always have a password that gets through our thick skulls … literally!