Recent Trends in
Biometric Technology
Recent trends in biometric technology trends suggest more secure and convenient ways of identification and authentication.
With the pace of rapid
innovation in today’s biometric technology field, new uses are appearing to
make the process of authentication more convenient and secure. These innovative
and useful processes of human identification are increasing in frequency with
every year. As these uses are increasing, they are also creating some trends
and reshaping the way we identify humans.
Of all the trends we see in the field of biometric technology, most are focused on finding a better and more efficient way of authenticating a person based on “Who they are.” Of course, there are still the traditional ways of identifying a person including personal identification numbers (PINs), ID cards, and passwords but these methods identify a person based on “what they have” or “what they know.” None of them identifies a person with the most important factor, which is “Who they are.” As biometric traits are personal and unique, this is perhaps the most accurate way of identifying a person.
All the trends we are
going to discuss today indicate how biometric technology is evolving to make
authentication more convenient and secured:
1.Mobile Biometric Technology
Both governments and the
private industry are turning to mobile biometrics to speed up processing of
human identification. Mobile biometrics simply means achieving individual
biometric identification on a mobile device with the portability to be easily
moved or shifted from one place to another. Biometric functionality can be
achieved on a mobile device either through its built in biometric sensors or by
attaching portable biometric hardware to it via a USB cable or through a Wi-Fi
connection.
This trend is triggered by
the fact that, biometric human identification can’t always be performed in a
controlled office environment. At times biometric identification might be
required to go where people go, perhaps in public venues. Under these situations
mobile biometrics can be effective and speed up the identification process. One
great example of this can be the Iraqi automated border control system.
Currently they have more than 100 mobile biometric checkpoints where they are
over one million registrants are currently checked every day with an ABIS biometric identification system to
protect their borders from insurgents and terrorists.
2.Multimodal Biometric Authentication Systems
The next trend in
biometrics is the use of multiple biometric authentication systems for human
identification. Multimodal biometric authentication systems
take input from a single or multiple biometric devices for measurement of two
or more different biometric characteristics to ensure authentication accuracy.
From our experience of
working in different verticals, we have seen that having a single form of
biometrics for authentication is no longer an effective option for many
companies.
For example, Bahrain based
Mass Contracting Co.WLL is a Manufacturing and construction company. They
wanted to take attendance of their construction workers and chose to deploy
our Bio-Plugin™ multimodal solution with both a fingerprint and finger vein
modality. They made that decision after considering the nature of
work performed by their construction workers. Construction workers are expected
to have dry, cut or damaged fingers. Having only a unimodal fingerprint based
solution was not ideal to capture the majority of individual biometric
credentials.
A unimodal biometric
system captures and matches only one biometric trait resulting in an absence of
sustainable ways to solve limitations like noisy data, intra-class variations,
non-universality, and spoof attacks. Multimodal biometric authentication
systems are expected to be more reliable against these issues due to the
presence of multiple, independent biometric traits. Multimodal biometric
authentication systems are expected to be used more in the future due to their
effectiveness in providing more accurate results and stronger security.
3.Cloud Based Biometric Solutions
This trend is mainly
driven by mobile biometric technology. When you are thinking mobile biometric
technology, pairing that mobile biometric device with a cloud based biometric
solution can speed up the identification process even more. Instead of saving the
biometric data locally, sending it to the cloud is a safer solution.
In addition, when government and enterprises are calculating the overhead cost they have to bear for maintaining a physical server, moving to the cloud seems like a wise choice. Another fact behind the rising trend of using cloud based biometric solutions is the scalability of the cloud. Cloud computing allows your business to easily upscale or downscale their IT requirements as required. For example, they can quickly increase their existing resources to accommodate increased business needs or changes. This allows them to accommodate their business growth without expensive changes to existing IT systems.
4.Vertical Specialized Biometric Solutions
Having a vertical
specialized biometric solution for identity management is becoming a popular
choice for many industries. These kinds of solutions are designed to meet the
unique demand of their respective industries. They are also customized by
keeping in mind the local and international industrial laws and standards.
For instance if you look
at our CertisID™ vertical
specialized biometric solution for the financial services industry, it is
designed to provide security, and reduce fraud and waste providing a complete
audit trail for both customer and employee activity. For the healthcare
industry, we have our RightPatient smart health platform that
facilitates a higher accuracy level for patient identification and unifies big
data and clinical knowledge in healthcare in an unprecedented way to drive personalized
health, decision support, and predictive analytics.
When seeking biometric
identification management solutions, businesses are very conscious about their
unique requirements and are opting to deploy a customized solution designed
specifically for their verticals. These solutions not only provide higher
efficiency and control, at times they provide a competitive advantage over
peers who are not yet adopting them.
5.Biometric Single Sign on (SSO)
Perhaps one of the
most popular debates at this point is whether biometrics will replace passwords. This debate came
to light due to the fact that many companies are adopting biometric single sign
on (SSO) over traditional passwords to secure their networks from data breaches
and to minimize password management costs. Let’s face it, passwords are weak!
They are weak because of multiple reasons: they can be guessed, forgotten,
shared or swapped. Conversely, biometrics are unique, hard to spoof, and you
cannot lose or share them.
In some cases where
employees must log into multiple databases and have different passwords for
each of them, it can be very frustrating. Uganda based ICT Systems Integration
Company Digital Alliance Limited was facing somewhat similar of a problem. This
was not only making employees frustrated but also decreasing productivity.
That’s why they choose to implement Enterprise Biometric Suite, a complete
biometric single SSO. Their employees no longer have to remember passwords and
their networks were secured too.
Future trends in Biometric Technology
Future trends in Biometric Technology
