Businesses, keen to drive digital transformation, have long walked the tightrope between incorporating new features and introducing new risks. Biometrics has helped mitigate this trade-off and empowers businesses to future-proof their systems against ever-evolving cyberattacks, streamline existing processes, and improve the customer experience.
Despite this progress, there are regular news stories of biometrics being subverted—fingerprints reproduced using HD images, and hackers and researchers hard at work attempting to fool facial recognition systems, iris scanners, and every other biometric technique.
New biometric techniques are being pioneered—vein recognition, facial expressions, ear shape and even chip implantation—but what of convenience? Do people see chip implantation as no big deal, or a sci-fi transhumanist nightmare? Finger vein recognition may be more secure, but is it sustainable for businesses to require more hardware to take payments?
What will drive the type and uptake of biometrics in the future? Will convenience or privacy limit what people are prepared to use? Or will security prevail, demanding ever-more sophisticated technologies in the arms race against hackers?
