According to a new study conducted by Juniper Research, biometric authentication is poised to move beyond fingerprints and leverage a number of different identifiers in the coming years. The research firm said that facial and voice recognition, in particular, will increasingly become part of many more consumers’ lives as they are expected to be installed on an estimated 190 million mobile devices, including smartphones and wearables, in 2016, before exceeding 600 million devices by 2021.
The new report, Mobile Biometrics: Consumer Markets, Opportunities & Forecasts 2016-2021, found that demand from businesses for methods that rely less on hardware will raise the profile of newer biometrics, particularly voiceprint and facial recognition solutions, over the next five years.
According to Juniper, these technologies are easier to deploy than fingerprinting, as they do not require dedicated hardware, and will thus bring biometric security to a whole new audience in markets with lower-tier smartphones, with fingerprinting remaining common in more affluent regions.
With many different biometric technologies now emerging for consumer use, the research firm predicts that multiple biometrics will become part of consumers’ mobile experience in the near future.
The study also found that use cases for biometrics will shift from identification to verification, thanks to the need for increased security of the biometric itself. In these cases, the biometric is stored and approved on-device and an affirmation sent to a service, rather than the biometric being transmitted and compared to a remotely held record.
“While biometrics offer an increased amount of security and convenience, they need higher levels of protection,” said research author James Moar. “Establishing best practices for storage and transmission of newer biometrics will be key to ensuring both consumer control over and the security of these most personal data.”
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