Authentication: Mobile Media and Biometrics
- The Research company Goode Intelligence has released a report entitled Mobile Phone Biometric Security Analysis and Forecasts 2011-2015 focusing on biometric solutions applied to mobile devices. According to their investigations, this market would have generated slightly more than 30 million dollars in 2011 and the study also highlights a possible growth to 161 million euros by 2015 (with a “boom” expected to take place over the next four years).
- These findings rely on several key factors, among which, the growth of the mobile market as well as on the use of multitask media to store sensitive data requiring protection. Users’ adoption of mobile devices to access private and professional portals as well banking and payment services, and the derived impending authentication needs should benefit to the market of biometrics.
- According to the same source, in place protection measures, PIN and PIP for instance, are not relevant: this could account for the use of biometrics. Finally, the same researchers deem that these solutions, commonly used in access control contexts, should also face their own mobile revolution.
- This report bets on the development of the mobile market and anticipates the resulting evolution of biometric solutions: several uses can be envisaged from access control to payments security.
- To this respect, the biometric market now relies on especially innovative solutions, with, for instance, new verification techniques. For example, the US developer EyeVerify is currently working on a new identification method relying on each individual’s unique sclerotic blood vessels patterns. EyeVerify intends to propose this solution on mobile devices through using Smartphones’ cameras to capture the image to be processed. The company should have completed a prototype version by mid-2012 and pilot testing might be scheduled during the third and fourth quarters of this same year. According to the developer, this technique could make it possible to avoid environmental restrictions that often impact the results of iris-based biometric recognition items (see Winkpass Creations’s eyeD, April 2011 Insight).