This article in the CXO Insight section of CIO Review is written by Steve Pedersen of BMO and offers enthusiastic support for biometrics as the replacement for passwords. The article initially discusses the weaknesses inherent in passwords and then discusses how biometrics will change the equation:
“Over the past few years, biometric technology has become much more common. We can now use our fingerprint to verify entry into our smartphones or facial recognition to board a plane, depending on which airline you fly. The way we authenticate ourselves in our personal lives is beginning to trickle into the business world, offering that same level of security coupled with convenience and usability for commercial payments.
Three in One: Security, Convenience and Cool Factor
Innovation, by design, opens companies up to new frontiers, which often comes with vulnerabilities. For payments, cutting-edge technology and processes mean new security concerns. As digital transformation brings sweeping organizational changes and new methods for online transactions, CIOs are increasingly focused on ensuring security and mitigating the risk of fraud.
Biometrics makes authentication easier than password entry and strengthens the security of the entire payments ecosystem, which means business professionals don’t need to sacrifice convenience or the cool factor that comes with using James Bond-like eye scans and fingerprint matching for security and data protection. Biometric technology ensures the integrity of the entire authentication process, from capture to matching. While our faces are public, and fingerprints are left on every surface we touch, biometrics is only one part of a layered security system that corporate card issuers use to protect cardholders from identity theft. If a fraudster has your biometric data alone, it is not enough to access your credit card account, and with encrypted biometric signatures, it’s very unlikely that stolen metrics can be used to gain control of your payment security.
With low adoption barriers and greater security, fraud protection and convenience to cardholders, it’s no wonder biometrics is expected to kick-start a new phase of growth in the payments industry. The new technology establishes best practices for secure transaction processing in corporate environments and continually minimizes customer service requests, like when you submit a ticket to your card issuer to reset your password or ask for login help. Biometric authentication will soon become more widely available to businesses, allowing users to feel protected when making payments that don’t include a face-to-face interaction, and reducing the chance of a card being used by anyone who is not the cardholder.”
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation and Director of the Emerging Technologies Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
Read the quoted story here