By 2021, 58% of the population will be online—connected to virtually everything, with banking and financial services at the top of the list. To cope with the noticeable growth in cybercrime, companies should use multi-factor authentication (MFA) or two-factor authentication (2FA) to protect online accounts.
Below, we explore how typing biometrics, a behavioral-based technology, can prevent fraud and provide user-friendly authentication for online payments.
Opportunities and responsibilities for financial providers
The digitalization of payments brought growth in the online payments market, which is forecast to reach $10.07 trillion by 2022. At the same time, cybersecurity concerns loom large within the banking and financial segments, which account for 22% of the online payment market.
Cyberthreats—such as social engineering, data breaches, and third-party threats—not only put the financial services providers’ reputation and customers’ trust at risk but also may cause huge financial losses.
In 2019 alone, banks stood to lose $347 billion to cybercrime—including the costs associated with fraudulent online payments, information theft, and malware or virus attacks.
In 2018, the average cost of cybercrime per firm in the financial services industry reached $18.5 million. To prevent fraud, regulations—including PSD2, NIST, and PCI DSS—mandate that financial institutions provide strong authentication for their customers to secure access to their accounts.
Friendly security is the key to good business
Replacing weak authentication protocols such as password-only login with strong authentication such as MFA can help payment processors gain a solid lead over fraudsters. According to this study, 41% of respondents are looking forward to seeing more MFA solutions available to digitally identify their customers.
There are plenty of authentication methods to choose from—ranging from mainstream passwords, security questions, and physical and software tokens—to the more complex plethora of biometrics, such as fingerprint and voice recognition. These can be used for 2FA and MFA, and for risk-based and continuous authentication to validate people’s identities.
Nevertheless, adding multiple steps to the authentication process can overwhelm people—often resulting in higher transaction abandonment rates and customer discontent. This is precisely why 75% of businesses want advanced authentication and security measures that have little or no impact on the digital user experience.
When it comes to their experiences, consumers tolerate friction for the sake of security at different levels. As such, companies should always try to lower barriers to account access as much as possible.
Behavioral biometrics prevents fraud
With a registered CAGR of 23.71% from 2015 to 2018, behavioral biometrics is the next big thing in cybersecurity, delivering security and convenience without impacting the user experience.
Behavioral biometrics works in the background, passively authenticating customers based on their regular behaviors. In this light, behavioral biometrics reduces online fraud while creating a highly desirable edge for financial providers against their competitors.
One anonymous data breach collection holds more than 2.2 billion credentials and personal information records. Such a massive breach could be made redundant by applying typing biometrics to the login process, so hackers can’t get access to someone else’s account.
How does typing biometrics work?
Typing biometrics is a form of behavioral biometrics that can be used for the purpose of authentication based on how people type. The technology, also known as keystroke dynamics, matches users’ typing patterns with previous typing samples to verify their identities.
Utilizing typing biometrics proves highly effective as it eliminates unnecessary device switching. Moreover, the only hardware it needs is a keyboard—which is universally available on almost any gadget.
As a result, typing behavior is the most accessible biometric worldwide, making the technology a great fit for online payment authentication.
Applying typing biometrics as an integral part of an advanced MFA solution can help online payment providers keep consumers safe and happy with their experience, in a passive, non-intrusive manner.
In 2017, the typing biometrics market was valued at $129.76 million, and it’s forecast to reach $754.86 million by 2025—with a strong focus on authentication for banking and financial institutions, government and defense, and healthcare.
Check out this demo to see how typing biometrics can be used to prevent fraud in an authentication scenario.
