Tag: biometrics

Biometric Authentication – Secure Cloud Storage

Is the ‘liveness’ of biometric authentication the way forward?

With smart payments becoming the norm throughout South Africa, a new type of financial convenience is upon us, along with an increased risk of cybercrime and fraud.

Tap-to-pay services, including Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and proprietary banking apps that link smart devices with customers’ credit cards, have come to make up a large chunk of total transactions, especially for income earners.

As this trend continues, it’s important to consider the security measures that need to be in place to avoid a surge in online fraud.

Let’s take a look at contactless payments and the biometric identification systems being developed to keep customers safe.

Enjoying tap-to-pay. Preventing tap-to-steal

If you’ve noticed tap-to-pay terminals at your favourite shop recently, you’ve already witnessed one of the biggest trends sweeping banking across the country.

Contactless payments, made possible by the NFC technology found in modern smartphones, mean you no longer have to swipe or insert your card. You can simply tap your credit card or an enabled device linked to your account and pay within seconds.

Standard Bank appears to be leading the way in this regard, with more than 50% of transactions at the bank currently taking place through contactless means. A similar upward trend has been reported by Absa and Nedbank, though not to the same extent.

The convenience that contactless payments bring is easy to anticipate; customers no longer need to enter PINs or swipe cards, as they can use biometrics on smartphones to ensure that the transactions taking place are genuinely theirs.

Unfortunately, like many verification technologies, biometrics have already been faked by cybercriminals.

Is that really your face? False facial images can deceive Face ID

Just when you thought cybercriminals couldn’t get any smarter, some of them have figured out how to reproduce a human face to such an accurate degree that Face ID and similar verification systems can be fooled.

  • In response to this threat, secure banking apps and other login credential verification systems are now requiring liveness verification, which can detect whether the face being used for identification belongs to a living, breathing human and matches the credentials for that specific account.
  • If you’ve tried to verify your online banking app recently, you may have experienced this process firsthand.
  • Multi-factor identification, including passwords, digital device tokens, and other methods to ensure that the account holder is logging in, have become the norm across the banking industry.

But while banking apps secure their login credentials, cybercriminals remain on the lookout for easy targets – including your sensitive business documents and client information.

Secure your data in the age of easy money flows

Keeping your company’s valuable data safe from online criminals has never been more important, and secure cloud storage is one of the best ways to ensure this. Soteria’s broad range of cloud storage packages is ideal for businesses of all sizes.Visit our website today to learn more.

 SA Eyes New Era with Biometrics

As recently as May this year, Malusi Gigaba, Minister of Home Affairs, announced that South Africa will be taking positive and determined steps forward in its mission to modernise its systems. Fingerprinting has become more integral and plays a significant role in identification in the country, but it has been a slow and often unreliable process due to manual systems that often failed. Now, South Africa will be staring the future directly in the face with its brand new biometrics ID system.

South Africa plans to be able to identify us all not only with digital fingerprint reading, but also through iris and facial recognition. While the digital fingerprinting system is already in use, the palm print and iris recognition side of things will only make its way onto the home affairs scene in 2019/2020.

The fact of the matter is that it’s no longer a pipe dream for the country. Everything has been set in motion with ABIS.

What is ABIS?

ABIS is the Automated Biometric Identification System that was recently launched in South Africa. What’s great about the system is that it won’t just be used as a means to identify citizens, but also as a security measure as it will contain the data of both locals and foreign nationals.

One can only hope that the Department of Home Affairs is considering the potential data breach opportunities that hackers will undoubtedly jump at with the launch of this new system. Will the data collected and saved be encrypted? Does the department have plans to put sufficient security measures in place? Only time will tell!

That being said, the new ABIS set up is proof that South Africa is forging ahead in terms of security. Have any concerns about biometric security and systems? Feel free to ask us!