What is NFC?
Near Field Communication (NFC) is the next innovative approach of mobile technology. It helps in making secure transactions, exchange digital content with just a touch. It is a set of standards for smartphones and similar electronic devices to establish and authorize communication with one another by simply striking them together or bringing them fairly close, not more than few centimetres. NFC is a type of radio communication standard, same as networking technologies like Bluetooth, WiFi, etc. At its most elemental level, near field communication is a standard for incredibly short-range radio transmission.
What you can do with NFC
With NFC, you can knock smartphones to mutually interchange information like photos, videos, docs, etc., with friends or business colleagues, or use your phone to read smart tags. Smart tags are miniature, read-only chips that could present in informational posters and identification documents, such as corporate badges or passports.
You can certainly use NFC to establish a secure connection without having to enter authorization pin or codes. For instance, you may be able to tap an NFC smartphone to a wifi router and if the NFC chip confirms your identity; your smartphone is approved to connect to the much faster WiFi which saves time for entering a PIN. Essentially, NFC makes it effortless to perform a huge range of digitized tasks.
How secure it is
Experts usually say NFC certainly is fundamentally secure by advantage of its excessively short range. In order to hack your NFC signal, a hacker would need to be barely close to you, so you’d know they were there. And unless it was a very familiar friend of yours, you’d likely not be cheerful about it.
There is more to the physical point of view of NFC that makes it alarming for even determined hackers.
The Rise of Near Field Communication
The rise of Near Field Communication can be considerably imputed to the certainty that some of the most acclaimed operators in the mobile industry opened their arms and brought the technology under their projection and are driving development. Some giants companies like Walmart, Target, etc., made bids for this joint plan of NFC and digital wallet. The affirmation and exhilaration these companies have expressed toward NFC continues to unfold the mobile payments industry and is the primal point-of-focus for many of these enterprises.
Higher numbers of handset vendor are now providing NFC-compatible outlets, for customers to make payments for their purchases. Despite NFC faces challenges due to concerns over its lack of supporting infrastructure and other factors, banks have very high optimism for the eternal development and application of the technology. Reported by EDN.com that according to Juniper research report, one in five Smartphones will be NFC equipped, by the year 2014.
– Courtesy of www.rationalbits.com
