On the heels of Mobile World Congress, March has been designated mobile biometrics month. There are numerous innovations in mobile technology and how it enables biometric authentication, as well as the growth of related technologies, such as mobile-based authentication for PC login and more. These improvements to the miniature supercomputers we all carry in our pockets will allow important new ways to prove our identities and authenticate financial transactions, to mention just a few use cases.
The Birth of Mobile Fingerprinting
Apple introduced the world to using your fingerprints on your smartphone with Touch ID in 2013, and since then millions of people have adopted using a fingerprint to unlock their devices, log into apps, and even authenticate payments while shopping. Continued developments by both Apple and Android device manufacturers will continue to provide innovation in mobile fingerprinting, though the future lies in more advanced biometrics, such as iris or hand recognition.
Moving Forward with Mobile Authentication
The continued evolution of mobile devices allows new and improved ways to prove our identities on them. Samsung attempted the integration of iris recognition with the Galaxy Note 7, and despite explosive failure, rumors persist that the company will continue to integrate near-infrared cameras into future phones. At the same time, both Samsung and Apple are rumored to be integrating fingerprint sensors underneath the screens of their next devices, allowing them to eliminate home buttons altogether, and potentially capture complete prints than home button-based sensors allow for.
Of course, there are other ways to capture biometrics on smartphones. From the cameras to the accelerometers built into our devices, they offer facial recognition, behavioral biometric capture, and complete hand recognition for strong and passive authentication purposes. The real future lies in building authentication into more applications and expanding its use beyond unlocking the device and accessing Apple Pay and its Android equivalents.
Marrying Security & Convenience Through Mobility
Our mobile devices are the most important pieces of technology to come into our homes in over a decade, and the ability to both make them more secure and add convenient security to other aspects of our lives will ensure their continued importance in our lives. As we look forward to the mobile future, we need to continue innovating on mobile biometrics and how we use them.
