Acer TravelMate 6410 TravelMate 6410 - 6460 User's Guide EN - Page 67
Password Authentication, Enhanced Authentication, Passwords and Passphrases
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English 55 means authenticating to the Security Platform. Only after successful authentication your Basic User Key can be used. The Acer Security Platform Solution provides two authentication levels to protect your Basic User Key: Password Authentication The Basic User Key is protected with the Basic User Password. This password has to be typed in manually. Enhanced Authentication The Basic User Key is protected with the Basic User Passphrase. This passphrase is securely stored by an authentication device, e.g. a SmartCard, a secure USB token, a fingerprint reader or another biometric authentication device. The passphrase can be accessed only by this authentication device, e.g. by inserting a SmartCard and typing in its PIN or by putting the finger on the fingerprint reader. Passwords and Passphrases With Password Authentication a "normal" password serves as Basic User Password. Although it is technically possible to use long and complex passwords, most passwords are quite short, because they need to be memorized. With Enhanced Authentication there is no need to memorize passwords, because they are managed by the authentication device. From the user's point of view, the password is replaced by a PIN or by a biometric authentication. Thus Enhanced Authentication is more user-friendly. On the other hand the security level is considerably raised with the authentication device's built-in security features. For example, a SmartCard has a retry counter blocking the card after several wrong PIN entries. This way brute-force attacks are made impossible and relatively simple PINs can be used. To emphasize that Enhanced Authentication combines long and complex passwords with user-friendliness, another term is used instead of Password: the Passphrase. A passphrase is basically nothing different than a long complex password. The Security Platform Solution differentiates between these two terms: Password is used in Password Authentication mode and means Basic User Password. Passphrase is used in Enhanced Authentication mode. It also means the Basic User Password. The Basic User Password is called Basic User Passphrase in this context.