The convenience of paying bills online or buying the new television you have been eyeing for weeks directly from your smartphone can easily be dwarfed by the risk of compromising sensitive, personal information.
In 2016, m-commerce companies experienced an average of 880 fraud attempts each, of which roughly 66 percent were successful.
Taking proactive measures to address legitimate concerns, banks, insurance providers and retailers have implemented advanced roadblocks, incorporating authentication methods like PINs, passwords and fingerprints to streamline user verification and ease apprehensions among consumers.
However, the steady stream of breaches and hacking scenarios across industries challenges the progress of cybersecurity measures, revealing just how much work is still needed to fully optimize and protect the information of millions of internet users. To that end, skilled hackers are proving that these methods are critically outdated and will continue to generate massive financial and operational issues for businesses, if not properly addressed.
New research reveals that retailers could lose nearly $71 billion in the next five years on transactions, such as online or mobile, where the card is not present. PINs, passwords and even fingerprints are no longer a sufficient means of securing private information or authenticating users. More layers of information are required while maintaining an easy user interface. Behavioral biometric authentication is one of the most advanced technologies available to do just that.
The origin of PINs and passwords dates back decades, alongside the evolution of the internet, as the need for a foolproof means of identification became increasingly critical. Over the years, businesses have gone through countless iterations, refining their approaches to cybersecurity in a desperate attempt to keep up with modern technology and social engineering. Today, even as countries like the United States and Canada boast impressive achievements in the cybersecurity protection space, 25 people in the U.S. fall victim to identity theft every minute — leading to $15 billion in losses from 13.1 million consumers in 2015.
Hackers are getting much more sophisticated and can easily infiltrate data storage devices, allowing for rapid escalation in identify theft and fraudulent transactions. Even fingerprints, which were once heralded as one of the strongest methods of human identification, can now be copied and used to expertly defeat biometric authentication. If static biometric data can actually be as vulnerable to mimicry, spoofing and impersonation as passwords, it raises the question: How can companies keep confidential information safe?
A holistic 360-degree view of customer interactions, coupled with multidimensional biometrics allows for cybersecurity systems to build layers upon layers of intel to create precisely accurate models of every single user and device.
A hacker may very well be able to duplicate an intricate human fingerprint, but there is virtually no way to compromise the behavioral signatures of an individual — let alone replicating the process across thousands to millions of users. With the ability to recognize small changes in the angle at which a user is accustomed to holding their mobile phone, to typical pressure and swipe mannerisms and the user’s gait, behavioral biometrics allows companies to be much more detailed in detecting potential fraud or attempted identity theft. Even the most adept hackers will find it extremely difficult to fool a system that analyzes hundreds of behavioral characteristics of a single user and continues to change and learn new metrics in real time.
Much like everything around us, the future of cybersecurity and authentication is evolving at a faster pace than some can imagine. Despite significant advances, scientists and engineers have only scratched the surface of authentication.
While it is critical that companies protect the identities of their users from hackers and criminals, it is also mandatory to develop a frictionless customer experience, so as not to lose the business of consumers frustrated by a burdensome process. Therefore, the technology has to be lightweight yet powerful enough that it learns independently and quickly from the individual device of the user.
AI-powered continuous authentication and N-dimensional biometrics bring a multilayered system of personalized defense to create trust that cannot be achieved by any other means. Anything less is no longer sufficient.
Fingerprints and standard security questions must be taken a step further. Closely analyzing and studying individualized human characteristics to develop sophisticated user models is what will ultimately create the greatest obstacle for hackers.
