The Future of Biometrics IoT

In 2018 when Apple unveiled its iconic iPhone X with a feature to unlock the phone with Face ID thereby eliminating the use of the home button, it met a lot of eye-rolls. Fast forward to now, people are in love with the biometrics enabled technologies. While iPhone X had a unimodal authentication system, gadget these days have updated themselves in a better way. Let's try to have a better understanding of the Biometrics:

What is Biometrics?

Biometrics are a way to measure a person's physical characteristics to verify their identity. It can be physiological traits, like fingerprints and eyes, or behavioral traits, that define the manner an individual respond to stimuli. These characteristics are unique to the person. Once collected the data compared with the pre-existing database to find a match. Accordingly, it then produces an outcome.

There are many varieties in which this data is collected. Facial and voice recognition, iris and finger scanner, signature verification, hand geometry, keystroke, gait detectors are some of the examples.

Need for IOT based Biometrics

With the massive amount of data extraction and exchange taking place every second, it is vital that this process should be secure and encrypted. This is where IoT becomes pivotal as a way to interchange the data and enhance the verification process of biometrics. This integration leads to:

· High-end monitoring of the guarded systems.

· Improved, smart security solution

· Customizable features that provide a personalized experience

· Real-time processing for authentication by reducing time complexity

· Emergency and comprehensive support system

· Faster data analysis

· Nullification the need to remember a bizarre set of passwords

· Cross-platform synchronization and compatibility

· Advanced alert with hack-proof systems

· Remote access to the system to control the data

· Electronic data entry

· Advanced Law enforcement and forensic applications

· Queue-less transactions

· Health monitoring

How safe are they?

Beneath the buzzword glam, eroding the dependency of passwords and pins, there are few loopholes that need to be worked on. These loopholes include:

· Environment and usage can affect measurements.

· Cannot be reset once compromised. Hence the loss of data.

· If the proper modularity is not maintained; a single-step failure of any particular module causes the crashing of the whole system.

· Possibility of physical hazards due to defective scanning.

· Carries irrevocable risks, such as identity theft of DNA, versus revocable risk such as replacing a password.

· Usage of biometric cards for a purpose other than those agreed by the user. Fraudsters or third parties can use this access for malicious activities.

· Higher risk of data breach especially private information and health records.

· Even facial identification can be bypassed by the use of posters, prints, latex masks (yes like in Mission Impossible movies). To make things worse, the background illumination, the quality of photo modules, the distance between an object and a lens – all these factors, to varying degrees, affect the final result.

Conclusion

The next-generation biometrics market was valued at USD 16.36 billion in 2019, and it is expected to reach a value of USD 93.88 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 35.53%, during the forecast period (2020-2025). Awareness should be the key whilst the developers must under the delicacy of the situations and questions posed about scalability, security, and heterogeneity. As the trend gets momentum, so will the quality. But this will also lead to the high pricing of the applications wherein Biometrical IoT exists. Issues like what parameters are to be taken into consideration, possible new uses, accuracy thresholds and error-risks, availability in the under-serviced markets must be prioritized before this disruptive technology is poised to take on the global market through digital transformation goes higher on the pedestal.