Biometrics Shaping the Future of Financial Institutions

In recent few years, financial institutions have seen important changes with the application of emerging technologies. The main projection is reflected in the passwords & PINs based functionality of the financial institutions where biometrics are getting involved with innovations. The central idea behind the biometrics is to provide a secure environment where users can easily access their accounts and make payments that facilitate all forms of digital security.

Use of biometrics in banking provides the seamless & easy environment to the customers. In response to the benefits involved in its implementation, banks are jumping into biometric technology. And, it confirms that 90% of users are willing to adopt biometrics in order to replace the password feature.

PINs and Passwords aren't enough anymore

Traditionally, banks are using PIN and password to authenticate their customers' identity and customers use a PIN and password to access their accounts and other banking solutions. But this method of providing authentication has been constantly forged by hackers as it is easy for them to manipulate and decode the password with the software available in the market.

Hence, banks around the world are adopting biometrics to authenticate customers accessing their services. Biometric is not limited to the banks only; other financial service providers are also adapting it to identify customers and to provide safeguard environment for easy transactions.

Deployment of Biometrics in Indian Financial Institution

There is no doubt that the deployment of a biometric authentication solution is on a rise than ever before. The following are some newly added features into financial institutions where biometric is playing a crucial role to protect the entire system from frauds:

1. The introduction of a two-way biometric authentication process in banking is making KYC (Know Your Customer) faster and convenient for customers. It improves the security by using biometric characteristics. Hence, verification takes less time and the customer gets easy access to use the banking services in just one-click.
2. Digital Certificate for Pensioners named “Jeevan Praman” is a biometric-enabled digital service for pensioners. It uses the “Aadhaar” platform for biometric authentication of the pensioner and after successful biometric authentication, it generates Digital Life Certificate. The Pension Disbursing Agencies can access the certificate online and via electronic delivery, transfers the pension in the bank account without any manual intervention.
3. Biometric ATM is another latest application of biometric authentication for Banking, Coupons & Self service ATM. Biometrics ATM offers an ATM type interface along with at-least one biometrics capturing device like a fingerprint scanner, iris camera, face recognition camera, palm/ finger vein scanner to verify the identity of the customer. It enables them to use their accounts for easy money transfer or withdraw cash anywhere, anytime just in one-click.
4. To boost the Digital India campaign into the next level, the government is trying to put the transaction of money totally digitized and going to introduce the chip-based credit or debit cards for the users with the biometric feature. The chip-based cards use the EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) chip technology, which is the global standard for credit card and debit card payments. These cards are embedded with a microprocessor that store and protect cardholders data. It is an evolution in our payment/ transaction system that will help to increase security, reduce card fraud and enable the use of future value-added applications.   

Why Biometric Technology Is Still Not the Absolute Replacement for Passwords

A good security token is the one that distinctively corresponds to you and which nobody could know, guess or copy. This is the reason why security experts suggest us to use long and random passwords for our safety. However, it is not as easy as it sounds because it gets hard to memorize strong and unique passwords.

Biometric technology as we know right now is the hot favorite technique of securing any place. It had to happen counting it is such a trouble free way of security than that of passwords we have to remember. In biometrics, our finger or thumb impressions not only make our job easier but also are unique by nature.

Also, biometric technology removed the trouble of hacking considering it is not a cakewalk for someone to hack your fingerprints than cracking the pass code. Following the best security practices, setting strong passwords for separate devices and then memorizing the same every time is not an easy thing as compared to biometrics.

So, if a biometric system seems so better in every department, why is there a need for amelioration? Why still the technology is not the astute replacement for the pesky passwords?

First and foremost, it is a certain fact that biometrics will play an important part in future validation. But we need to understand that the system is not a cure for everything at the present moment. There are still many issues that prevail which need to be taken care of in order to make the technology thoroughly invulnerable.

A lot of researchers in the world have stated that it is not exactly true that biometrics cannot be rehashed as they tried on fooling fingerprint readers and successfully got past the digital scanners via some special pair of glasses. More to it, the biometrics that were instigated initially keep all the data stored on server rather than restricting it to the client so breaching the security system isn't impossible in this case scenario.

Last year it was reported that in a United States Office of Human Resource Management, touch ID's of millions of government employees were stolen which first raised the suspicion on the tech. Immediately ascertaining the threat, the mobile companies quickly altered the fingerprint system in the devices by adding a password security succeeding the touch ID.

This data breach made it clear that biometrics is not impeccable. In fact they have simply shunned the passwords. Counting it can get very problematic if someone cannot log in with his or her touch ID, all the software companies ranging from Microsoft's Windows 10 and Google's Android have provided password tool as well to ensure this does not happen.

So, relying on biometric authentication is not recommended at the current time as having a backup in the form of passwords is very important. This process is called multi factor authentication (MFA) where we can put biometric as one of the two-way security procedure, while passwords the other.

Biometrics are indeed a fantastic method of verification but the tech is not yet a completely error proof. So, it should not be taken as an outright replacement for passwords but instead must be implemented along with it for enhanced protection.

Starlink is an Indian-based manufacturer and exporter of the biometric security system including employee access, access control systems and atm security system which provides a top level security system with protection against atm theft.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com