Biometrics are fast becoming the norm for identity verification in banking—but criminals are adapting to these authentication methods as quickly as consumers.
Biometric forms of authentication, like the various modes of “Selfie Pay,” fingerprint recognition, and voice ID, provide more security than passwords—but that doesn’t mean financial institutions can afford to drop their guard.
Instead, FIs should take a more “holistic” approach, Conor White, president, Americas, at biometric authentication technology provider Daon, told Bank Innovation:
What might have seemed like science fiction just a handful of years ago, or something out of a James Bond movie, is now a reality made possible by smartphones. Touch ID and Android Fingerprint brought this technology to the masses, but organizations are now realizing that they need to take a holistic approach to their digital strategy as there is no one form of authentication that is a silver bullet.
Like any security solution, biometrics have their issues—something like the voice mimicking service Lyrebird could be adapted to fool voice authentication; remote image or video capture can trick certain forms of face recognition; and fooling fingerprint scanners is something of a criminal art form at this point.
Daon, which announced the integration of its IdentityX biometric service with Experian’s CrossCore platform yesterday, bets that providing more freedom of choice and control to the consumer with biometrics might help reduce the rate of fraud, especially as the method grows more popular in mobile banking. According to White:
The pace of change in the security arms race is too fast to base a strategy on any single solution as cyber criminals are constantly looking for exploits. An authentication solution needs to be designed systematically to be resilient over time and nimble enough to easily implement new technology.
Choice enables lower transition costs, easy third-party integration, and future-proofed, best-of-breed solutions that evolve much more effectively than singular point solutions.