iPhone Fingerprint Scanner Could Boost BYOD
Media members review the new iPhone models this week. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
People (like Marissa Mayer) who won't use phone passcodes may prefer fingerprints.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer doesn’t use a passcode to protect her phone, defying the wisdom of most corporate IT departments.
“I just can’t do this passcode thing 15 times a day,” she said on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. Mayer was answering a question about the new fingerprint scanner on Apple’s iPhone 5S, which can be used to unlock the phone instead of a traditional passcode. She said it was her favorite feature unveiled by Apple yesterday.
“When I saw the fingerprint thing, I was like, and now I don’t have to” bother with a passcode, she said.
Mayer is hardly alone: Apple said yesterday that half of iPhone users don’t set a passcode. But most companies require all employees to use some sort of password on any device that receives corporate email. Accessing an employee’s email account is often the first step toward a broader hack of a company’s network.