This week we received more news in breaking down the barriers in biometric access control adoption from an innovative company who started making waves last fall: Zwipe. The company’s next generation biometric smart card leverages a built-in Fingerprint Cards biometric sensor in order to add a layer of strong mobile authentication to existing physical access infrastructure.
The technology will be introduced at ISC West this year and is part of an emerging trend of low-friction biometric solutions that attack the traditional obstacles of adoption. What seems to set Zwipe apart from the pack in this respect, is that there is absolutely no new infrastructure to add to a building. The card acts as a contactless proximity token, similar to FOBs or common ID cards that rely on NFC to provide authorized access. The biometrics that make this solution so appealing are completely contained on the smart card itself, so multifactor security is just a natural extension of investing in a few of these self-contained security upgrades.
The kind of attention to accessibility that Zwipe is paying to protecting off-limits areas is a comfort considering another piece of news covered this week. A recent study commissioned by Cisco Systems revealed that 40 percent of federal employees are putting their associated agencies at risk due to their bad mobility habits. The survey results showed that a certain level of carelessness is still common among those who use mobile devices (including laptops) for work purposes.
This places education back on the table when it comes to what the identity management industries need to be targeting for 2014. With solutions becoming more and more accessible on an increasingly frequent basis, the biggest obstacle from an end user perspective is remaining the same as it always was: the simply don’t know the best practices.
Education is a major concern in strong authentication according to the 11th annual findBIOMETRICS Year in Review, which polled experts from around the globe in various backgrounds about what challenges the coming year will hold for companies, professionals and organizations involved in identity management. The Year in Review has just started at our sister site, and for the rest of the month readers will be able to see from a respected industry perspective just exactly how big a role mobility played in 2013’s headline-making year for biometrics and beyond.
Follow Us