SAN JOSE, Calif. -
"You're going to see a lot of things biometric in the coming years, and there will be a big push by financial institutions towards biometric security," claimed Barbara Cure, information technology project and vendor manager at Technology CU here. "Biometrics is really getting ready to truly take off now, and it's going to be a huge, huge change."
The push will be worth it, if you look at what's happening at Tech CU: biometrics security, unlike other identity verification approaches, is 100% successful at preventing fraud at the $1.3-billion CU, said Cure.
"Biometrics helps us get away from using social security numbers, which is why we have so much fraud in the first place," she explained.
Cure-who speaks on biometrics at a number of national trade conferences every year-can give you a million other reasons as to why you should believe in biometric security.
It seems that a convergence is in the works among the major players in biometrics, including financial institutions, payment processors, merchants, regulators, hardware manufacturers-even consumers, said Cure.
Since 2003, members at Technology CU have been able to walk into any of 10 branches with just the shirt on their backs-and their fingertips-and be positively identified in about five seconds, using any one of 90 fingerpad readers at the CU's teller and new account stations.
Over time, members have become more educated and less afraid, Cure said.
"Our members have become very comfortable because they know we keep a template that represents an alpha-numeric value of their fingerprint, not the fingerprint itself," she explained.
About 65% of all members who walk into the branch are registered for biometric identification, Cure said. "That's pretty high penetration."
And it's not just Generation Y who's logging-in by finger, Cure said. "Everyone expects that the under-30 group is the biggest user."
Not so at Technology CU. "There are an astounding number of users in their 50s," she said.
More than 5,300 users are 30 years or older, more than 5,000 are 40 or older, and more than 2,600 are 50 or older, Cure said.
Members are particularly interested in biometrics with the preponderance of headlines about data breaches, said Kathleen Litman, vice president, marketing at Technology CU.
"We're going to reinvigorate our biometrics marketing because of the emphasis on identity theft," Litman said.
Although a thief couldn't steal a fingerprint from Tech CU and duplicate it, it is possible that the alpha-numeric value could be stolen, Cure admitted.
"My biggest concern is a man-in-the-middle attack, where biometric data is being transmitted on an unsecured line by a payments company or during an online banking session," she said. "But that could happen right now with ATMs if data were going back and forth on lines that weren't secured properly.
"Biometrics is better than the card and PIN and maiden name paradigm, and it's improving," she continued.
Hardware manufacturers are largely responsible for the improvements, Cure said.
"The new readers can factor in temperature and pressure readings and use hundreds of calculations to make the algorithm," making it hard for thieves to use a victim's dead finger or break the security code to achieve positive identification, she said.
In addition, financial institutions can get more for less these days, she said. "Costs have come down. For a few dollars more per unit, we added biometrics to our card and PIN pads. And there are now several biometric standards, so you're no longer limited to a couple of hardware vendors."
Homebanking users can get fingerprint pads for $10 each to use on their home computers, Cure said. "We'll probably add biometric log-ins to homebanking in 2008, after the online banking companies have finished consolidating."
ATM, laptop and mobile device manufacturers are routinely adding fingerprint readers to their machines, creating the ideal environment for people to verify their identity as they shop and bank on the go, Cure said.
Even the credit and debit card companies are experimenting with payments initiated by fingerprints instead of plastic-especially after the initial retail success of Pay By Touch, the biometric authentication network, she said. "For now, VISA and Mastercard are still stuck on plastic cards because they can market with their logos, but that's old-school marketing."
Last year's Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment guidance, issued by the Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council, lent credence to biometrics, Cure said.
"By stating in the multi-factor authentication guidelines that biometrics is one good option, the FFIEC made biometrics regulatory more attractive," she said.
more
Read more about CUs using biometrics at cujournal.com and search the following bolded terms in the archive:
* Purdue EFCU Adds IDMatrixx
* Mountain America FCU Implements Fingerprint Identification
* Typing Test
* Leave Your Mark
For info on this story:
* Technology CU, www.techcu.com
* National Biometric Security Project, www.nationalbiometric.org
* The Biometric Consortium, www.biometrics.org
* Biometric Digest, www.biodigest.com
* re: ID, www.regardingid.com
