Biometric Security Getting Bigger, Faster

When it comes to lock-down security in mobile devices, both people and companies are looking towards biometric security more and more every day. A new report by industry analyst Tractica underlines this trend, estimating that fingerprint readers in mobile devices will surpass the 1 billion units shipped per year mark by the end of 2021. This report also claims that this growth will mean that more than one-third of all mobile devices sold around the world will include fingerprint scanners.

Fingerprint scanners are just part of the way that biometric security will play a role in the coming months and years. Voice recognition, face recognition and eye white recognition are all becoming more popular, especially in the corporate sector. These security measures allow for greater security (they have become increasingly difficult to fake) as well as greater speed and efficiency.

This is why all industry analysis seems to be pointing at an even more widespread use of biometric processes such as fingerprint scanning. While it isn’t being used as much as it could, it’s going to catch on quickly and in a big way soon. “Currently, the use cases for mobile fingerprint readers center on basic authentication for local device access and on-device purchase transactions,” Bob Lockhart said in a recent release. “As penetration rates increase in the future, however, the market will expand to include a variety of additional identification and authentication use cases for banking and financial transactions, government identification, and healthcare applications, among others.”

Now that companies like Apple (News - Alert) have managed to take complex technology and put it on their smartphones, it appears other companies are looking to jump into the biometric security pool at the consumer level. And now that more companies are willing to make the leap, there are few industries who want to be left out in the cold.