Implementing Fingerprint Biometrics: Best Practices for Identity Verification  

What is Biometric Verification?

We all possess identifiable physical traits that are singular and unrivalled, commonly referred to as biometric attributes. Fingerprints, voice, and face traits are well-known biometric characteristics that are frequently utilised in identity verification.

Consequently, what is biometric verification? Identification of people using these distinctive, previously described traits is known as biometric verification. In this way, you may demonstrate your identity in both a real and digital setting. You may need to do this in order to access the desired service, device, or location on some systems.

Two workflows frequently employ biometric verification:

• Customer Onboarding: Customers must frequently prove their identification when they first sign up, hence this is known as “onboarding.” Consider that you wish to create a bank account. When setting up your biometric characteristics, the bank would ask you for your identity papers and do a facial scan.
  The next time you need to confirm your identity to access your services, you can scan your fingerprints in the biometric verification system, which analyses and prepares a machine-readable file.
• Giving authorization: Accessing your account or services should be simpler and take no more than a few seconds after the user onboarding procedure. Your biometric characteristics are compared and analysed in real-time with the information from the onboarding procedure in order to confirm your identification. You can access your account, services, or systems if the biometrics match.

Why you should use Biometric Verification

Identity theft affects 15 million Americans annually, according to the Crime Museum. $50 billion in financial losses are the outcome, which may be avoided by using an appropriate biometric verification system.

Additionally, a business must have procedures in place to guarantee information security and uphold data integrity. It is equally crucial to offer your end consumers a platform where they may safely share their data.

You can achieve it by integrating cutting-edge technology like AI and machine learning into a biometric verification system. Intelligent, computerised systems offer chances to defend your business and your clients from identity fraud and to prevent the occurrence of this crime.

Utilising biometric identity verification software can help your company in a number of ways if AML requirements or KYC policies are a concern: 

• Bolster Security
• Boost compliance
• Cut Expenses
• Cut down on turnaround time
• Reduce the likelihood of fraud

How does Biometric ID verification work?

Comparisons are the foundation of the whole biometric authentication procedure. Biometric systems employ computer vision, a subfield of artificial intelligence, to record unique traits that don’t change over time and store the information for future verification.

The system checks a user’s biometrics against the information in the database whenever they request authentication. This process is known as biometric recognition. Access is provided if the match is precise. Three components serve as the foundation of all biometric systems:

• For identification, a scanner or reader is utilised to record and scan the biometric element.
• a programme that digitises recorded or scanned data and uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to compare any new data to the previously stored data.
• a database where the biometric information is stored, allowing the programme to do a comparison check as needed.
• Scanners and other equipment can assess biometrics, but an increasing number of organisations are using smartphones instead. A programme that enables users to scan their biometrics for identity verification is also required, in addition to hardware like a smartphone or scanner. 

Now that you are aware of how and what is needed for biometric ID verification, let’s look at the various varieties.

Types of Biometric Verification 

There are several forms of biometric ID verification. The amount of safety that each offers sets them apart from one another. The availability of scanners, sensors, or cameras is a determining factor for some. 

The most popular kinds of biometric recognition are mentioned below:

• Facial recognition (Face Match)
• Selfie verification (Real-time Face ID Check)
• Video ID verification (Liveness Detection)
• Fingerprint Verification (Fingerprint Identification)

Although fingerprint verification once needed special equipment like a sensor to scan and validate the contours of the finger, it is now possible to use merely a smartphone camera. 

Let’s look at why fingerprint verification is a great option for biometric verification, be it for granted access, digital onboarding or KYC. 

What is Fingerprint Verification? 

Verifying a user’s identity using their fingerprints is a technique known as fingerprint verification. Utilising biometrics most frequently involves fingerprint authentication. 

IDcentral’s TouchSense Fingerprint Verification Solution uses camera captures of either the thumbs or the remaining four fingers to scan and verify the fingerprint. Without needing any equipment than your smartphone camera, TouchSense enables contactless fingerprint scanning and authentication. 

How Does Fingerprint Verification Work?

The process of user onboarding and verification is usually complicated, and identical phrases are frequently used to describe somewhat different procedures when it comes to biometric verification such as finger scan identification.

As a start, fingerprints are regarded as a biometric identification method. These are biometric verification techniques that check a person’s bodily characteristics against user records in a particular system.

Using fingerprints in this situation offers a high level of security. Although it is theoretically conceivable for two fingerprints to be identical, it is extremely unusual and less likely to occur in any configuration that poses a serious danger to security.

A user must submit an ID and a fingerprint scan in order to complete fingerprint verification in its most basic version. To alert the system that a certain user is attempting to access the system, the ID might be anything like a username or PIN.

The information is obtained through a scanner that can map and read the distinctive features of a fingerprint, such as its whorls, valleys, ridges, and other features, and convert them into digital information. Then, a method for verifying users is employed using that data.

It’s crucial to keep in mind that fingerprint identification is distinct from verification:

• The method of fingerprint identification involves taking a user’s fingerprint and cross-referencing it against a database to establish its relationship with a user. We’ve all seen police dramas, for instance, when the programme analyses fingerprints to check if there is a match in a police database. Now you have an identity.
• Fingerprint verification is the process of confirming that a user is who they say they are by using data and a form of identification.

Although the differences appear to be modest, they significantly alter how the technology is used. In the latter case (verification), the user actively tries to enter the system and, as a result, supplies some kind of credential to do so. Access is restricted if the biometric scan and the particular fingerprint connected to that identification don’t match. Even if the fingerprint could be in the system, there won’t be a match if the right ID and fingerprint aren’t supplied.

Best Practices and Importance of Fingerprint Verification for Businesses?

For a number of reasons, fingerprint verification is a very practical piece of technology that may speed and simplify the process of authenticating people both within and outside of your company (such as clients or customers).

The following advantages are why biometric fingerprint verification is significant:

• Secure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): By adding biometric MFA, you may increase the security of your authentication by using a mix of passwords, PINs, and scans. Even if biometrics are difficult to forge or steal, the hacker still has to present a physical artefact in order to pass a scan. Additionally, a hacker or algorithm won’t be able to estimate biometric information through brute-force assaults.
• Lower IT Costs: Verification might be expensive to deploy in terms of software and hardware, but it can eventually assist solve typical IT issues like forgotten passwords. You can automate password recovery or even develop passwordless authentication systems using biometric authentication.
• Mobile workers, clients, and customers: A biometric scanner of some kind—and occasionally many scanners—are included on the majority of contemporary mobile devices, including numerous laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Some models of the iMac Pro and MacBook Pro from 2021 have face or fingerprint scanning. These days’ Windows machines frequently have both. A fingerprint or face scanner is nearly usually included with smartphones and tablets. In light of this, including scanning in your authentication and verification system can create secure opportunities for your staff to collaborate remotely. It can also give you the security you need to communicate with consumers via their mobile devices, such as for supporting cutting-edge security technologies or collecting payments (PCI compliance).

The biometric verification process has various restrictions:

• A fingerprint cannot be changed; it is non-transferable. If your account has been compromised or has to be changed, it will be a considerably bigger job that can need new fingerprints from other fingers or another type of physical verification.
• Verification is likely one of the most affordable biometric technologies to integrate into your authentication system, although it still costs more than a standard password system. Smaller businesses who are trying to keep expenses down may find this to be a huge turnoff (although this is becoming less of an issue as technology gets more affordable).
• Not Touch-Free: As the COVID-19 epidemic has demonstrated, touchless technologies that don’t require public exposure have a lot of advantages. Personal phones have less of a problem with this, but public PCs or laptops have a far bigger issue.

Verification has certain limitations, but for the most part, it is a secure, practical, and cost-effective kind of MFA that may help your compliance and IT strategy.

IDcentral’s TouchSense Fingerprint Verification Solution 

A strong combination of mobile devices, and advanced biometrics like TouchSense Fingerprint Verification & Face Match enables a quick and streamlined digital onboarding workflow. With IDcentral’s Identity Verification solution, your organization can implement secure fingerprint or facial recognition verification coupled with KYC Onboarding API that verifies IDs like Aadhaar, PAN, Passport and more via government database checks to ensure complete regulatory compliance. 

IDcentral’s TouchSense Fingerprint Verification Solution uses real-time camera captures of either the thumbs or the remaining four fingers of either hand to scan and verify the fingerprint. Without needing any equipment than a typical smartphone camera, TouchSense enables contactless fingerprint scanning and authentication. 

IDcentral’s Biometric Verification (Face Match & TouchSense) can be used in accordance to:

• KYC compliance: IDcentral’s Biometric Verification Platform is KYC compliant to support eKYC verification that meets the demands of the financial industry and others.
• Strong compliance adherence: IDcentral’s Identity verification API meets standards and industry-grade compliance needs to make sure the onboarding workflow adheres to the latest regulatory requirements. 
• Liveness Detection: IDcentral’s Face Trace and Face Match solutions include AI-enabled liveness detection that uses passive liveness check to automatically detect liveness without having to perform tasks to reduce customer onboarding friction, improve verification accuracy and minimize potential fraud. Liveness detection ensures the user is physically present at the point of authentication.

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