White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel says he would like to see passwords replaced by selfies,
The Christian Science Monitor reported.
He
made the remarks during a conference hosted by the Center for National Policy and The Christian Science Monitor.
"Frankly, I would love to kill the password dead as a primary security method, because it's terrible," said Daniel.
"You could use the cameras on cellphones, which are now ubiquitous, so the selfies are used for something besides posting on Facebook," he added.
Late model iPhones already use fingerprint scanners for security, which Daniel said were also good.
He said
expediency usually trumps cybersecurity efforts. Companies needed to come up with technologies that provide security while taking into account how people actually behave.
Security measures that prove unwieldy just won't be used, he cautioned, according to
Defense One.
Referring to new encryption policies by Apple and Google aimed at shielding private phone data, Daniel said the real issue was
how to improve encryption at the corporate level without putting information beyond the legitimate reach of law enforcement in a court approved process.
"We don't want to have something that puts it utterly beyond the reach of law enforcement in appropriate circumstances," he told Defense One.
Daniel also said that disconnecting essential infrastructure, such as nuclear plants, from the Internet to protect them was unrealistic.
"As tempting as that might be to do as a solution, I also don't think it's possible to wind the clock back and not have some of these systems enabled for access," the Monitor reported.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.