Things To Come: Biometric Technology

Biometric technology: People will 'swipe hand of FACE' instead of card

In the future, old-fashioned chip and pin and passwords, as well as keys, will be rendered useless as much of the world relies on biometric security.

It is thought the new technology will keep people’s money and property safer than ever before by totally eliminating identity theft.

Just this month, MasterCard revealed it was looking at plans to introduce a biometric payment card that will have an in-built fingerprint sensor.

Proposals like these are reportedly being fast-tracked by a number of companies in response to new EU regulations set to come into force that require people to use two methods of authorisation when making a payment.

Stan Swearingen, the chief executive officer at IDEX, which is the biometric technology provider for MasterCard, said fingerprint bank cards will likely be used across the UK within two years.

He told the Independent: “I believe it’s the future. When you look at the convenience and security, and what it does to the experience I believe it is the future. There are pilots all over the globe and next year we expect millions of units to be deployed.

“It really physically ties the card to you, it’s not that someone can look over your shoulder and steal your password.

“If someone was going to spoof [a fingerprint] they would first have to get a latent high-quality fingerprint of yours, they would then have to lift that print, apply it to a substance, maybe gelatine, and then apply it to their finger to work in front of the shopkeeper.

“It could perhaps be done but it wouldn’t be scalable, you couldn’t do it to multiple accounts. Even if they could then the back-end analytics would flag it up as unusual shopper behaviour. When you combine it all together this is a compelling security offer.”

But concerns have been raised that this type of technology could in itself open up a whole new avenue of identity theft.

David Emm, the principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, commented: “There’s one major downside to the use of biometrics. Biometric data stored by a service provider is just as valuable a target as a database containing usernames and passwords.

“In my view, they should rather be used to confirm our identity, with a password (or other mechanism – or ideally more than one) used to confirm that identity. If I choose a poor password and it is compromised, I can change it: if my fingerprint is compromised, there’s nothing I can do about it.”