Tag: Authentication

The Implications Of Soaring Mobile Biometric Authentication Stats

Noticed an interesting stat hit the wires on Tuesday (Oct. 27) from Juniper Research. Juniper reported “that the increased rollout of contactless payment services using fingerprint scanners will push the number of biometrically authenticated transactions to nearly 5bn by 2019, up from less than 130 million this year.”

Going from 130 million to almost 5 billion in four years is an impressive path—if the numbers are to be believed—but the changes to consumer behavior is potentially even more dramatic. Juniper limited its projection to biometrically authenticated transactions. The reality is that as consumers get comfortable with mobile biometrics, those fingerprint scans will authenticate consumers as they walk into banks, doctor’s offices, gyms and when they open secure apps. In the same way that fingerprint scans on iOS and Android devices are making consumers comfortable with all manner of biometric authentication, those devices and associated behaviors are also going to open the door to biometric authentication in areas well beyond mobile devices. Indeed, they could open the doors to, well, opening doors.

The Non-Intuitive World Of Authentication And Social Media

A cyberthief walks into a bank branch, fully prepared to impersonate his intended high-net-worth victim. Not only is he equipped with fake IDs in the victim’s name, lots of personal information courtesy of social and search engine research, but the thief has even taken the precaution of breaking into his victim’s social accounts and replacing his thief-like face for the victim’s on the victim’s own social sites. If anyone tries to check on the Facebook or LinkedIn site of the victim, the thief’s face would be confirmed.

The banker in this case sits beneath a tiny video camera, one that is aimed at the seat where customers sit and specifically the facial area of those customers. Controls of the banker-facing screen allow the image to be precisely aimed for customers of varying heights. And while the banker is pitching her safe-deposit boxes and other bank services, software does a quick check on the thief’s face. Sure enough, it matches the social media images—but the software notes that those images were all recently changed. The software’s database maintains a record of the last 10 images of everyone it can find—and that history of images foiled our thief’s efforts.