Mobile World Congress kicked off today in Barcelona, Spain, and BIO-key International is there demonstrating the latest advances in its mobile authentication ecosystem. Additionally, the biometric technology company is also showcasing InterDigital’s Multi-Factor Authentication Server (MFAS).
InterDigital’s MFAS is custom built to meet consumer authentication needs for large scale over the top service providers, including Mobile Network Operators. Leveraging BIO-key’s interoperable fingerprint matching capabilities and supporting a variety of FIDO authenticators, InterDigitals’ MFAS offers a great amount of flexibility in terms of user preference. The service provider or user can, depending on preference, authenticate on device or in the cloud.
According to Jim Nolan, executive vice president at InterDigital, it has become difficult for service providers to provide easy and frictionless access to services that require authentication. Compounding the issue is the constant influx of various new authentication factors, which is not making adoption any easier.
Nolan says, “InterDigital’s MFAS architecture aims to provide consumers with a seamless and secure authentication experience, and provides [service providers] with an easy to access and dynamic granular authentication capability that may be matched to the risk associated with the service being provided.”
BIO-key’s chairman and CEO, Mike DePasquale, explains, “Consumers want to use their mobile devices to authorize transactions and payments, as well as access high stake online information. The device manufacturers continue to produce dynamic products with features targeting mass consumer appeal, and application developers continue to produce an endless stream of high value online e-commerce offerings and information services.”
DePasquale states that the ability to operate on device or in the cloud is not something that has been seen thus far in terms of complete authentication ecosystems. “BIO-key has formed strategic partnerships with InterDigital, IDEX, NEXT Biometrics and the major security infrastructure providers including IBM, CA and Oracle in an effort to address this challenge and to create a global ecosystem for mobile authentication,” he says.
Mobile World Congress is running now through Thursday March 5.
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