Biometric authentication has come a long way in the past few years – new, innovative and secure solutions are available, making the option of using biometric authentication appealing for a lot of companies. Biometrics match unique physical features (such as fingerprint, face, veins, hand gestures) to verify that the user is authorised to access the service. Here are 5 reasons to pay attention.

 

1. Frictionless user experience

The most obvious benefit of biometric authentication is the incredibly easy, fast, and convenient user experience. As biometric authentication is based on ‘something you are’, users don’t need to remember ‘something you know’ (like a password) or ‘something you have’ (like an external ID card), Whether you scan your fingertip, face or show your veins to gain access to an app/service, the process is designed to be fast and easy, making the identification process extremely user friendly.

 

2. Operational efficiency

Resetting forgotten passwords is a duty heavy operation for any customer service or IT department. However, there is a slim chance that you’d forget or lose your own biometrics. Therefore, biometric authentication helps to cut down on resource-consuming operational tasks, enabling significant cost savings.

 

3. Higher security

Biometric authentication relies on unique physical traits enabling highly accurate and difficult-to-forge identification, which mitigates the risk of breach and enables higher security. With more traditional authentication methods, such as passwords, the risk of misplacing the information, it being copied (ever have a yellow post-it note of passwords?) or hacked is much higher, which can lead to serious security problems and related costs.

Occasionally, there are times when biometric authentication has its downsides, e.g. a broken finger in a cast can slow down or prevent a scan, so backup authentication methods should be available.

 

4. Supports multiple verticals

Modern biometric authentication systems allow the user to be identified very securely with high identification accuracy, supporting verticals with even the most sensitive data such as finance or government use cases.

 

5. Accessibility

Biometric authentication methods are usually straightforward to use, which makes them easy to learn and adapt to. Traditional authentication methods can limit access for certain users, e.g. passwords for those unable to read or with visual impairments. Biometric authentication methods enable services to cater for wider user groups and provide better accessibility and inclusion.

 

Conclusions

Here we have it. Biometric authentication can help companies to elevate to the next level of digital transformation with modern, user friendly and secure authentication and even provide services to new audience groups limited by legacy methods.

Find out more about biometric authentication, including how best to embed biometrics in your service. Download the free white paper: Secure your application with biometric authentication.