Today was another independent research day. I decided to research the pathway to implementing my solution. Mr. Holroyd (my organizer) described Lenovo as owning Motorola and this being a path for my idea to be implemented. I researched more into how I could make a demo for Motorola phones and started preparing a presentation for Mr. Holroyd to present.
Author: jack_perkins
Lenovo Day 5
Today, Mr. Holroyd and I met to discuss my ideas and the end goal of the project. We started off discussing my first idea but came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t fit that well and thus, moved on to a second idea that I had also been researching. This second idea was the idea about researching how diseases could be spread using sensors in your phone and artificial intelligence. We talked through the final output and how I would frame the project once more and the possibility of presenting it to his supervisor.
Lenovo Day 4
On Friday, I still hadn’t met with Mr. Holroyd so I did some more research into my topic and I researched how I could apply it to the LEAN business model. The LEAN business model is the startup model that Lenovo uses when there are internal independent research projects and a picture of the format can be seen below. I worked on figuring out the unique value and unfair advantage portions of the Business plan which would be in the implementation of my idea as a hardware chip. Next week I hope to meet with Mr. Holroyd to give further guidance on next steps.
Lenovo Day 3
Although, a time couldn’t be sorted to meet virtually with Mr. Holroyd about my research topic idea I went ahead and picked the idea regarding the TPM like log in system. During my research I found that 90% of Microsoft’s IT team now signs in completely without passwords because of the dangers that humans are to cybersecurity. Many of them choose to use a USB device that you can plug in to log in. However, I felt like to be adapted by the public the USB device would have to go because the likelihood and convenience of everyone carrying USB’s around isn’t really there. Additionally from personal research I had known about an upcoming technology called Trusted Platform Module (TPM). These are hardware chips that ensure your computer’s security and enable functionality for certain biometric login features. However, I felt like finding a way to port a similar chip to software authentication on your computer rather then using a username and password would be an improvement.
Day 2 Lenovo
Today was more of an independent research day so I spent it looking into my project ideas. Mr. Holroyd asked me to come up with 3 ideas to pitch to him in a meeting of possible projects that I can look into. The ideas all had to answer: “to research how biometrics can help Lenovo users lead a healthy lifestyle.” The first idea I came up with combines 2 technologies that I know of exist currently, USB passwords and TPM. It would be a chip inside of your computer that can be used to login to software rather than ensuring hardware security. The second idea would be to use the sensors in phones used to detect the spread of COVID-19 to use them to research and inform the public of the spreads of other diseases. The third idea would be to find a convenient way to move away from fingerprint or face authentication because of the risks present in information being obtained from these methods. Tomorrow, I will talk to Mr. Holroyd about which idea to pursue.
Lenovo Day 1
Today, I met with William Holroyd to go over the project expectations as well as possible ideas for an individual research project. He discussed how we are going to have to look for problem that can be solved using biometrics and this got me thinking of how I can tie it back into cybersecurity. Specifically when he described how biometrics are used in computers and phones already like to log you in I started thinking about what I could do with that. He said that they had all originated from technology that he had worked on with Microsoft in the Xbox 360 called the Kinect an image is linked.
Lenovo
We are going to be looking into biometrics at Lenovo and how it impacts their users. The specific question that the host asked us to look into prior to the opportunity is “to research how biometrics can help Lenovo users lead a healthy lifestyle”. We have our first meeting Monday and will be given an overview on what we will be doing more specifically.