Almost all large organizations will use biometric authentication technology by 2020 despite all the general concerns about this technology.
Spiceworks surveyed nearly 500 members in North America and Europe to gather their opinions on biometric technology for authentication. The survey found that 62% are already using it in some form, while 24% will do so in the next two years. Most consider it the best alternative to static passwords, PINs and personal security questions, while only 10% believe biometrics are secure enough to be used as the only form of authentication.
This means that in most cases companies will use a combination of different technologies.
Fingerprint scanners were the most popular form of biometrics among respondents (57%), followed by facial recognition (14%), hand geometry recognition (5%), iris scanners (3%), voice recognition (2%) and palm recognition (2%).
Apple appears to have the lead when it comes to fingerprint scanning (34%) and facial recognition (14%). Lenovo fingerprint readers (13%) and Samsung fingerprint readers (13%) were also popular, as were Windows Hello face login (13%) and Android Face Unlock (7%).
Beyond the organizations' data, only 23% of security engineers believe that biometric authentication will replace traditional passwords in the next two to three years, and this is because, as they say, there is not enough transparency about the potential vulnerabilities of biometric systems (65%) nor about the collection of biometric data and the way companies will manage it (63%).
