Meta description: To increase the security of online banking, Biometric Authentication is a concise step taken to batter the continuous cyberattacks in financial institutes.
With the increase in online banking, there is a general interest of financial institutes to increase the security of their system, mainly because of the escalation of cyber threats while establishing the facility of online account information access for users from the access portals. Biometric identification is a valuable asset to be added in online banking for providing a secure and safe banking experience for the users.
Biometric Authentication
The question resides on, what is biometric authentication? To put it simply, a Biometric Authentication process is a procedure of verifying the identity of the users by evaluating their biometric information. Biometric authentication is a big step taken to enhance the security of confidential record access and to counteract security breaches.
Different Biometric Solutions
Biometric Services can be branched into many types. With eye and fingerprints most common types of biometric authentication, facial recognition is also climbing into popularity. An outlook on various categories of biometric authentication are listed below
Facial Recognition
The software in facial recognition detects and analyses the geometric features of the face; analyzing the distance between their eyes, eyebrows, nose, and chin, and mapping a 3D image of the person’s face.
Voice recognition
Works by analyzing the voice of the person by detecting its vocal cords. Cold, bronchitis, and background noise can affect the identification process, which is the disadvantage of this approach.
Fingerprints recognition
This type of biometric Services has been used for a long time. In fingerprint recognition, the system scans and detects the fingerprints of the user, and is mostly used in security-related organizations like police stations, banking, military, and government organizations, along with public and private sectors.
Eye recognition
Recognizes the retina of the users and graphs the patterns of it, making Eye recognition a simple and efficient approach, with the only disadvantage of pupil contraction and expansion affecting the identification process.
A discussion on online banking and the increased risk of cybercrimes
The general definition of Cybersecurity includes securing confidential material from the attempts of online attacks. Cyberattacks have arrived as one of the worrisome threats to the financial industry in recent times and the efforts of combating cyberattacks are also in demand. Just recently, Hackers hacked the email system of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and sent out fake messages through it. Even though the FBI has said that they had shut down the system and had given out the related warnings immediately, the point to be anxious over remains, which is the height these lawbreakers have in accessing the confidential system.
As reported by Fortunly on the data breaches in the financial industry, the damage put by cyber attacks on banks has reached $18.3. The US has gone through 1,473 cyberattacks in 2020 with 164.6 million breaches of data. 8 in 10 people are afraid of the security of the financial assets of the businesses. 71% of the breaches on data security are related to financial resources. 92% of the ATMs are on a threat and are vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Is biometric Verification better than passwords?
So the question that is in heated debate is whether the biometric system should be used instead of mere passwords. Biometric authentication is a far better approach than using simple password checks on user login, as every person possesses unique biometric information. Passwords are a weaker measure taken in maximizing the security of the system because they can be easily hacked and most users have a tendency of using the same passwords on various websites, increasing the risk further. Moreover, passwords are harder to memorize. Bill Gates’s prediction of the end of passwords, saying that they don’t “meet the challenge”, is evident considering the recent uprising of cyberattacks in the financial market.
Biometric Technology and online banking
Wrapping up the topic, Biometric Identification Online is a decisive step taken in securing online banking experience. Biometric Services can reduce users’ fear of privacy breakage, especially in mobile banking. Any unauthorised person cannot access the user’s banking account without passing all the Biometric Verification Online checks. The system will screen the users’ selfie images against their pictures on the government-issued identity documents using facial recognition, adding liveness detection of the person along with 3D mapping, skin texture, and depth detection, and give account access based on the verification results. In this way, the users can be verified of their identities before the system gives them access to the information that is considered classified.