Abstract
A new international study has shown that the Covid-19 pandemic has created a boom in demand for biometric technology, but users are increasingly worried about the security threat from spoofing such systems.
Survey found growing concern over the spoofing threat.
The ‘2021 Biometric Survey’ captures the views of 220 organisations that have deployed or are thinking of deploying biometrics. It found that due to Covid-19, 64% of the respondents have increased their prioritisation of technology that supports remote onboarding and mobile apps. As a result, 45% have increased their use of biometrics to counter the pandemic.
But 40% of those surveyed believe biometric spoofing presents a high or very high threat. When asked about how high they feel the threat will be in two years, this percentage increased to 54%. As a result, over 90% of the respondents said that liveness detection is important in combatting biometric spoofing attacks.
The study was carried out by research firm Goode Intelligence and sponsored by voice and face biometrics specialist ID R&D.
“This survey offers important insight into how organisations are viewing biometrics in the Covid-19 era,” said Goode Intelligence CEO Alan Goode. “Even before Covid, organisations have been increasingly turning to biometrics to balance convenience and security for identity verification, authentication and fraud detection. We expect increasing levels of adoption of biometric technology to combat fraud and support frictionless user experience across all digital channels.”
Just over half the respondents said that their company currently uses biometrics. Of these, 69% use the technology for authentication, 75% for identity verification and 31% for fraud detection.
“The survey results are evidence of companies adopting biometrics to provide users with the convenience and security they demand,” said ID R&D president Alexey Khitrov.
• A new study from Juniper Research predicts that some 1.4 billion people worldwide will be using facial recognition for payments authentication by 2025 – compared to just 671 million in 2020. “This rapid growth of 120% demonstrates how widespread facial recognition has become,” Juniper said, fuelled by its low barriers to entry and the growing ubiquity of front-facing cameras in mobile devices.
The study credits Apple's introduction of FaceID with accelerating the growth of the wider facial recognition market, despite the challenges presented by face mask use during the Covid pandemic. But backing up the Goode survey findings, this study also recommends that facial ID vendors implement robust AI-based verification checks to ensure the validity of user identity – or risk losing people's trust in this authentication method as spoofing attempts increase.