Biometrics on smartphones has started creating a wave of revolution in the mobile devices genre. In the past, remembering passwords was easier because you didn�t have too many devices or accounts. And few people were connected to even fewer devices.
As new innovations came in, the increase in device usage resulted in more number of people being connected, and caution about personal data and security became rampant. In the past, passwords were the only way to authenticate a user, but with new techniques in hacking systems it became very important to incorporate complex forms of security systems in their devices.
Over the last few months we have observed a precipitous rise in the use of biometrics to protect personal data because mobile devices and biometrics have evolved to be a winning combination among users.
What is Biometrics?
Biometrics is a technology by which manufacturers incorporate sensors that would help devices recognise its original owner. This could be through voice recognition, face recognition, fingerprints, and so on. In the past, government organizations used fingerprint scanners to identify their key staff in various critical departments, but now with the advent of more complex devices, biometrics have started making its presence felt in every aspect of our lives.Let us examine the different ways in which biometrics on smart devices can change the very way we live and work.
1. Passwords, Our Body itself Changes into a Password
Once upon a time, we used to secure our email accounts with passwords. Not anymore, because with biometrics usage, it is the body itself that turns into a password. The idea is to make it impossible for hackers and crooks to gain access to your email and personal details.These days, mobile phones are incorporating multiple authentication methods to ensure the identity of the users, making it virtually impossible for hackers to do anything.
2. Less Hassle, More Convenience
With fingerprint technology and face recognition software, convenience, combined with security has become the key factors. Several banks, like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo already use fingerprint technology to help users use their accounts faster.
More and more companies are beginning to use other technologies like heartbeat and selfies to authenticate their users. Consumers have already begun to adopt fingerprint and face recognition technologies because it is more convenient than passwords.
3. Biometric Payments
Through biometric payments, POS technology or Point of Sale technology makes an entry. As mentioned earlier, this kind of authentication system uses unique traits like facial recognition, voice recognition, iris pattern, palm pattern or fingerprint pattern for making payments. Because of this feature, you no longer have to carry cash, check or credit cards anymore.
4. Acts as a Boon to Mobile Shoppers
Apart from voice, fingerprint and facial recognition, many companies have gone a step further and adopted another technique using GPS locator to trace the person�s location. This is already being used by payment providers and financial institutions. If you are using their app from an expected location, the payment will go smoothly, if not, then it will be halted.
If the GPS locator in your smartphone shows that you are making a payment from another location, there will be an authentication score that will be measured according to the parameters already fed. If the authentication score passes these parameters, you can make the payment.
5. Biometrics Making Waves in the Healthcare Industry
The application of biometrics in hospitals, clinics and patient care is making a huge impact in the healthcare industry. This can ensure less hassle for the patients, thanks to the simple and intuitive photo identification software.
Biometrics is a great help as it secures patient data, increasing security for doctors and nurses. Healthcare biometrics is a boon for patient monitoring thereby addressing continuous and constant patient care and taking it to a totally different level.
6. Biometrics Offers Tremendous Help for Cloud Computing
Cloud service providers can provide excellent security to their users when they use biometric recognition systems as an authentication tool. A cloud user can access his data using biometrics by registering his unique traits, such as fingerprints, iris or face recognition, and these would be stored in the form of templates at the cloud service provider�s database.
Each time a customer accesses his account on his smartphone, these traits would be tallied and matched, and only then entry to cloud data is granted.
7. Banking is No Longer a Worry with Biometrics
For the financial sector, protecting customer data and their own data is the most crucial challenge. They have always tried to improve their security measures, so the personal data shared by their customers would always remain safe. Investing in biometrics would protect all the data and save their customer�s accounts from fraudulent activities.Hence, you can expect biometrics to replace PIN numbers in ATMs, solve the problem of CNP fraud (Card-not-present crimes), incorporate contactless mobile payments, and introduce multi-modal biometric authentication for mobile banking.
Conclusion
With biometrics, the system of using password for accounts and devices is already dying. This technology has already made a strong presence in several aspects of our life. It has increased data security, made payments secure and increased the pace of processes in various applications of life.
In the future, you can expect biometrics in smartphones to help people gauge their own medical health and act accordingly. And if you go beyond smartphones, you can also see ATM machines where pin numbers are no longer required because they are fitted with biometric readers.
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