Passwords have proven futile for securing mission-critical systems, as seen in the recent US Office of Personnel Management breach and other high-level compromises. Biometrics are slowly starting to make their way into the public consciousness—think Apple’s fingerprint sensor—but true mainstreaming will require an easier way to build biometrics into everyday apps.
That’s something that HYPR is hoping to address with the Biometric Tokenization SDK for third-party integration—which takes aim at the new frontier of connected devices and their apps.
The HYPR SDK enables enterprises to seamlessly implement biometric authentication in any application. Users can leverage biometric devices, such as phones and tablets, to authenticate with fingerprint, facial or voice recognition. It includes mobile and desktop client libraries, as well as server side software, to enable biometric tokenization.
The platform is delivered as-a-service, so it allows users to authenticate actions without transmitting biometric data across the internet. And rather than storing user data on a centralized server, HYPR keeps the data securely offline.
"When we started building the HYPR platform, there was one mobile device on the market with a fingerprint reader,” said George Avetisov, CEO of HYPR. “By the end of 2016, analysts project over a billion biometric-enabled devices will be in internet users' hands. We're ensuring that companies are utilizing those biometric devices the right way, and that user data is kept safe.”
The HYPR SDK is in deployment across a number of banks, which are implementing biometric security solutions for use cases ranging from internal employee authentication to their consumer-facing mobile apps. Mobile wallets and Bitcoin platforms also are integrating HYPR to prevent payment fraud across their user base.
“We've also been working with IoT developers, healthcare providers and even streaming content platforms to deploy biometric authentication and eliminate account sharing,” added Avetisov.
The HYPR SDK is an "add-on" piece of software, so instead of replacing a company's authentication scheme, it’s used to overlay biometric authentication compatibility to an existing infrastructure. Users can also pick and choose their security approaches: A bank might want to use only fingerprint readers on certain devices, but not facial recognition, for instance.
"The proliferation of the Internet of Things has created a world of new security concerns that enterprises are largely unequipped for and are continually scrambling to address,” said Kyle Prigmore, analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “An emerging priority for organizations is to move beyond simple password-based protocols and implement a new generation of authentication processes-namely through biometric technologies. HYPR Corp. provides a robust biometric solution that is sector-agnostic and scalable for the ever-growing IoT."