Accessibility is quickly becoming the big strong authentication buzzword this year. With the mainstreaming of next generation identification technologies, the focus is shifting from the highly verticalized “Which factor is best” attitude to a progressive one that asks “Which factor or combination of factors is optimum in this situation?”
IdentityX, an affiliate of Daon specializing in mobile biometric authentication technology, has introduces a new solution that embodies the accessible mandate expressed above. It’s called Infinity, and it is the world’s first universal authentication platform.
“All over the world, companies are scrambling to build better biometrics,” says Conor White, president of IdentityX, who was recently interviewed by Mobile ID World. “But what’s keeping the world from online trust isn’t a better biometric factor; it’s a better platform for synchronizing, selecting, and combining the dozens of biometric and non-biometric factors we already have, and the ones we’ve yet to discover.”
As such, the Infinity Platform boasts the ability to allow users to pick from literally any authentication factor – from passwords and tokens; to voice, fingerprint or facial recognition; to iris recognition when it becomes widely available in the mainstream markets – and craft a sort of self-serve multifactor system.
“No single authentication factor will ever be suitable for every user, for every activity, for every device,” says White. “When you try to modulate between security and convenience, you end up getting neither. But when we introduce flexibility and choice into the system, it’s suddenly possible to elevate both security and convenience simultaneously.”
Indeed, this delicate and coveted balance between security and convenience is at the heart of next generation identity technologies. What Infinity proposes is an encouragingly disruptive idea: any given situation requiring security is as unique as the biometrics a user can employ as protection.
The smartphone is home to an increasing number of hardwares capable of measuring different biometrics, with even new innovations in earphones allowing for blood oxygen levels to be measured. These are truly multi-modal devices when it comes to applications in biometric security. To limit the potential for users is to claim that all problems can be solved with one solution, and we all know how that attitude turned out with passwords and security questions.
White hammers the point home, explaining, “That’s what makes the Infinity Platform so disruptive. The strongest authentication factor isn’t a superior biometric; it’s choice.”
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