The world today moves ahead with technological advancements every day. In this digital age where dependence on online businesses and marketing is growing, the security threats are also not much behind. In this field, Biometric technology has played a massive role in enhancing security, which is a step-up from the previous password protection or Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) methods.
Biometrics is quite useful and better for a number of reasons. It uses control biometrico technology that examines a human body’s characteristics like DNA, facial patterns, eye retina, and hand measurements for authentication processes. A person is identified by the blood vessel pattern beneath the skin – which is unique to each individual. Such a process is quite secure as cloning a human’s DNA or facial patterns is a much harder task than cracking passwords. This year saw various trends in Biometrics Technology, which is most likely to rise in the coming years.
Some of the trends are as follows:
1. Incorporating biometrics in money transaction businesses
Online shopping is a major source of income and a usual trend these days thereby holding many security threats as well such as credit card frauds. In this case, biometric plays a very important role as recently MasterCard is about to launch a facial recognition service wherein customers can complete transactions with just a selfie.
The various shopping portals will include a Biometric scanner in their shopping process with facial recognition system which will help in completing transactions with a single scan of the customer’s face.
2. Mobile Biometric System
Mobiles have been a major part of our lives. This year the number of mobile phone users has reached almost 6 billion. Therefore, government and private commerce are converging to mobile biometrics to speed up the identification process. This trend is rising because biometrics cannot always be carried out in a closed location. Sometimes, biometric identifications go places where people go like stadiums, markets or simply public places.
One great example of the Mobile Biometric System is the Iraqi automated border control system. There are at least 100 mobile biometric checkpoints with over a million registrations. This helps in keeping a check and protecting them from insurgents.
3. Cloud Based Biometric Security
This is in relation to the mobile biometric system. The details of the biometric are coupled with a cloud-based server, which in response helps in pacing the verification process. Cloud saved biometric data is more secured than locally saved biometric data.
4. Biometric Single Sign on (SSO)
Another rising trend seen is the use of a Biometric Single Sign on (SSO). With this system, the individual does not have to remember ID’s and passwords for every account. This helps in speeding up the work and additionally helps to swap the problem of remembering multiple passwords.
5. National Security Measures
Biometric system comes in very handy to the governments who are switching to it in order to enhance national security. The main reason for this is that there are a high number of digital interactions between countries, with a highly vulnerable security risk. Using Biometrics decreases the hack rate and opens a channel for safe information transfers.
6. Future Proof Technology
Biometrics seems to be a guaranteed improvement in terms of enhancing security and increasing work speed, two of the biggest traits required for development. Hence, investing in this technology seems to be the forte of many private firms and government agencies especially the secret services like CIA of USA or R&AW of India.
Apart from these rising trends, numerous more developments that are pursued which might be part of future trends include the voice printing and heartbeat authentication.
Institutions are using frequency estimations, neural networks and Gaussian mixture models to process and store voiceprints. This system focuses on the speaking aspect of the individual and therefore applicable in the fields of kidnapping, ransom demands and crank phone calls.
Companies illustrating exceeding innovations are using one-step verification using heartbeat authentication. This technique is applicable as wearable wristbands, which checks a person’s exclusive electrocardiograph, making false identification very hard.
Conclusion
Biometric technology presently represents the safest procedure as far as online security is concerned. The innovative method has a large scale following and with the way things are going this system seems just the right one to follow. However, the hackers are also showing innovations in their fields and a recent example of that is the hacking group called Chaos Computer Club who replicated the fingerprint of the German defense Minister. Therefore, how the security firms encounter such lapses is to be seen in the future.