What risks does using Biometric Data presents?

Biometric authentication uses human physical or behavioral characteristics to digitally identify a person to grant access to systems, devices, or data. Examples of these biometric identifiers are fingerprints, facial patterns, voice, or typing cadence. Each of these identifiers is considered unique to the individual, and can be used in combination to ensure greater identification accuracy.

Because biometrics can provide a reasonable level of trust in authenticating a person with less friction for the user, it has the potential to dramatically improve business security. Computers and devices can be automatically unlocked when they detect the fingerprints of an approved user. Server room doors can be opened by recognizing the faces of trusted sysadmins. Help desk systems can automatically extract all relevant information when they recognize the voice of an employee on the helpline and many forms of recognition which help improve security.

92% of companies, say classify the biometric authentication as “effective” or “very effective” in protecting identity data stored on premises, and 86% say it is effective in protecting data stored in a public cloud. However, companies must be careful in how they implement their biometric authentication systems to avoid infringing on the privacy of employees or customers, or improperly exposing confidential information.

What risks can the biometric Data system face

Now… The main problem with biometric authentication is that, like any authentication system, it requires: hardware (scanning device or reader), software (that digitizes and converts the captured information into a numerical value to compare and search for matches that allow the request to be authorized or denied) and a database to store the information for this comparison.

Like the above, we cannot forget that even though our personal traits are unique, we must not forget that they are susceptible to being duplicated by hackers, as in everything in cybersecurity, unfortunately, not everything can be 100% secure, but with the pass of the time this systems can be improved and get stronger security little by little.

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