70 per cent biometric authentication via smartphones by 2022

By 2022, 70 per cent of organisations using biometric authentication for workforce access will implement it via smartphone apps, regardless of the endpoint device being used, according to global research firm Gartner. It also predicts that by 2022, 40 per cent of global mid-size and larger organisations will use IAM (Identity and Access Management) capabilities delivered as software as a Service (SaaS) to fulfill most of their needs. 

This increasing interest in biometric authentication is due to lower costs and improved user experience. 
“Biometric authentication uses biological or behavioural traits unique to each person and offers better UX/CX (user experience/customer experience) and accountability than other common methods. Implementing this via smartphone apps provides more consistency in UX/CX and is technically simpler than supporting it directly on a variety of different endpoint devices,” said Ant Allan, research vice-president at Gartner.

Mid-size and large organisations looking to implement biometric authentication through mobile apps have to be aware that biometric approaches that can be readily supported on any smartphone are vulnerable to presentation attacks or “spoofing” using photos, videos, voice recordings and so on. To prevent this, detection or “liveness testing” is essential for such implementation, it said.