Nok Nok Labs, FIDO Ready for iPhone Facial Recognition

Nok Nok Labs is welcoming the arrival of facial recognition on the iPhone.

The feature isn’t yet a sure thing, of course. Apple is, as usual, tight-lipped about its plans for the upcoming device. But rumors have been circulating, and evidence in the form of intellectual property is mounting, that Apple is going to complement the Touch ID fingerprint scanning it pioneered on previous iPhones with a facial recognition system for added security and convenience on this year’s iPhone.

In a blog post, Nok Nok Labs notes that for some organizations, such a development would bring a headache, since “a whole new wave of work will be required to integrate with that feature” into their existing security setups. “Even those who had already integrated with the fingerprint will have to recode, redesign, retest and rework their existing systems to adapt to a changing landscape,” the company notes.

But for those that have embraced FIDO standards and Nok Nok Labs’ authentication solution, this won’t be much of a problem. The standards outline an approach to authentication that theoretically supports all biometric modalities, while Nok Nok Labs’ S3 Authentication Suite is designed for adaptability, swapping in new authentication mechanisms on the fly. A client needs only to “perform a single integration of a server, add just a handful of lines of code to their mobile application, and simply chose the types of authenticators that they wish to accept” in order to support iPhone facial recognition.

It’s this level-headed approach that has made Nok Nok Labs an chief expert on the ongoing mobile biometrics revolution – the topic of FindBiometrics’ premiere webinar of 2017. Nok Nok Labs Director of Product Management Santosh Rajvaidya will participate in the panel discussion alongside experts from Precise Biometrics, Aware, Inc., Acuity Market Intelligence, and the GSMA, all of whom will have critical insights to share on mobile biometrics as major smartphone makers like Apple continue to push the state of the art.