Keystroke Dynamics is part of a larger class of biometrics known as behavioral biometrics; their patterns are statistical in nature. It is a commonly held belief that behavioral biometrics are not as reliable as physical biometrics used for authentication such as fingerprints or retinal scans or DNA. The reality here is that behavioral biometrics use a confidence measurement instead of the traditional pass/fail measurements. As such, the traditional benchmarks of False Acceptance Rate (FAR) and False Rejection Rates (FRR) no longer have linear relationships.

The benefit to keystroke dynamics (as well as other behavioral biometrics) is that FRR/FAR can be adjusted by changing the acceptance threshold at the individual level. This allows for explicitly defined individual risk mitigation — something physical biometric technologies could never achieve.

Another benefit of keystroke dynamics: they can be captured continuously—not just at the start-up time—and may be adequately accurate to trigger an alarm to another system or person to come double-check the situation.