IBM MobileFirst Foundation Gets Behavioral Biometrics Capability

IBM’s exploration of behavioral biometrics technology is starting to pay off with a new authentication capability available on its IBM MobileFirst Foundation platform.

The technology comes courtesy of SecuredTouch, and it uses over a hundred metrics pertaining to user behavior to help authenticate an individual, from how hard the user presses her smartphone’s screen to the angle at which she holds the device, and so on. In a statement announcing the new authentication option, IBM asserted that it “immediately recognizes non-human behavior, catching and stopping suspicious activity before fraud occurs.”

IBM’s first big step into behavioral biometrics came last autumn, when the company announced IBM Security Trusteer Pinpoint Detect, a machine learning system for digital banking designed to construct user profiles based on behavioral patterns. Integrating SecuredTouch technology into MobileFirst Foundation is another indication of IBM’s investment in behavioral biometrics technology.

It’s also a sign of the growing popularity of this technology more broadly, with some industry analysts expecting it to quickly ascend to a position as one of the premiere modalities of user authentication.