Advanced biometric technology: Reinforcing security within payment systems

Abstract

The exploitation of traditional digital access credentials — cards, PINs and passwords (CPPs) — lies at the heart of most IT-based crime. The vulnerabilities caused by CPPs are routinely exploited in all sorts of fraudulent transactions. Banks cannot rigorously govern what happens within these systems, and social media sites are also certainly exploited by cyber villains. Given the advanced state of large-scale biometric applications in physical security, it is certainly possible to integrate biometric-based authentication into systems that manage payments, as well as into consumer-facing systems, and no other biometric modality can compare with fingerprints in terms of convenience, accuracy and speed. In the past ten years, competent biometric technology has proved its operational effectiveness at organisations in South Africa. Biometric-based authentication is now regarded as a business tool that reinforces security and improves operational efficiencies by providing strict identity control.