Behavioral Biometrics: An Update
Behavioral biometrics involves the use of biometric data mining to measure, analyze and even predict human activity over time.
It isn’t a new field, dating back to the invention of the telegraph in the 1860s, where telegraph operators would use signal patterns to identify fellow operators.
More recently, the widespread adoption of relevant technologies (especially smartphones and wearables) by consumers, combined with advanced analytics, has opened up the field to a wide range of new applications.
Examples include behaviour recognition and prediction from a wide array of biometric data captured and transmitted via smartphones, wearables, smart speakers and other devices, including voice and speech patterns, lip and eye motion-tracking, gait, haptic and touch response, game strategy (for example, from online games), credit card use and car-driving habits.
The behavioral biometrics market is expected to grow significantly in the next few years, to reach US $2.5 billion globally by 2023 (it was worth around US $871 million in 2018).
Key players include most of the big tech firms (such as Apple, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Facebook), firms mainly built around behavioural biometrics (for example, BioCatch, CrossMatch, ThreatMetrix, NuData), large retailers (such as Walmart) and many others across a wide range of industries.
Even McDonald’s is getting in on the behavioral biometrics action, recently announcing a U.S. $300 million acquisition of Dynamic Yield, a start-up that offers retailers ‘decision logic’, the type of tech that ‘nudges’ you with suggestions about what other customers bought based on the contents of your online shopping cart.
But it’s not all smooth sailing for behavioral biometrics, with significant consumer privacy concerns highlighted recently, such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Protecting consumers’ data privacy is so concerning that Facebook’s own CEO just asked policymakers and regulators to increase internet regulation, including new privacy regulations to ‘…build on the protections the GDPR provides.’
Behavioral biometrics has a wide range of promising applications, from delivering better customer engagement and experiences to predictive healthcare and risk mitigation.
It also comes with significant risks. Outside the tech giants and firms already operating in this field, few organizations would have the resources or expertise to keep abreast of the latest trends in behavioral biometrics, not to mention having a strategy in place to manage the associated risks and opportunities.
The rapid growth of behavioral biometrics applications across different fields means all firms need to up their awareness of the potential risks of these new technologies, and (ideally) have strategies in place to manage foreseeable risks, such as new types of identity theft and fraud, data privacy and ethical risks, and emerging threats associated with rapidly-evolving cyber-bio-physical systems.
Leading firms are already investing in strategies to make the most of the opportunities presented by new behavioral biometrics applications, to deliver more value to their customers and shareholders, while mitigating emerging risks.
About the author: Aamer Fattah is a medical scientist and a Research and Innovation expert with Munich Re.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency, organization, employer or company.
