Leaders emerging as behavioral biometrics market matures

The rapid development of the behavioral biometrics market over the past several years has dramatically improved the security of many online service providers by giving fraud prevention efforts a powerful new tool. Customers are continuing to learn about the technology even as they deploy it, and in some cases struggle to make the best use of behavioral biometrics and analytics.

Behavioral biometrics systems are not all equal, but even beyond the need for customers to find an effective set of algorithms, it is important to find the set of capabilities and features that will actually deliver the desired combination of compliance, protection, user experience and affordability.

Selecting a behavioral biometrics provider in this environment can be challenging even for fraud prevention professionals and businesses that are ahead of the curve, and have some idea of what they are looking for.

One silver lining to this situation is that as the market matures, diamonds in the rough can be found, offering robust technology with the capabilities and feature set customers need to meet their compliance, user experience and fraud prevention needs.

Signs of a good behavioral biometrics solution

In isolation, an effective behavioral biometric technology is characterized by the lack of friction it adds to the user experience, and the accuracy of its authentication. Other characteristics, such as how long (or how much data) it takes to accurately match the behavior, manifests to the end-user in terms of those two most important criteria – the provider’s experience and the accuracy of their solutions.

Behavioral biometrics can provide a completely passive authentication factor, operating in the background as the user interacts with the application or website. The technology delivers high accuracy for identification and authentication, and the same robust security and inherence factor as other biometrics, without being susceptible to presentation attacks (or ‘spoofs’) the way other biometric factors are.

The technology in not used in isolation, however, in fraud prevention systems, but must be integrated into a larger technology ecosystem. Successful fraud prevention programs make use of many tools beyond comparing behavior to the established patterns of the individual user, and a good solution is one which integrates the behavioral biometrics capability with the other tools needed for a complete picture of fraud risk.

These tools include threat detection, transaction risk analysis, and data analytics, along with identity verification, all feeding into behavioral profiling that provides early warning, allows businesses to know their users, and ultimately stops fraudulent payments.

Even though the space is too new for many of the leading behavioral biometrics providers to be household names, those that are established in their original or core market can show track records of protecting clients. Those leaders can be identified by strong customer bases with little or no churn, even if those customers are concentrated within a particular niche.

ThreatMark’s customer base is mostly made up of organizations in Europe’s financial sector, and in that segment the effectiveness of the company’s technology is well-known, and reflected in a commanding market share. The company’s complete fraud prevention software suite with integrated behavioral biometrics has also earned recognition by Gartner, Forrester, KuppingerCole, Deloitte and others.

Industries benefiting from behavioral biometrics technologies

The banking sector and financial services industry, with its high regulatory demands and access to innovation, has led early adoption of behavioral biometrics.

The market landscape is changing rapidly, however, as businesses in different verticals discover ways they could benefit from reduced friction in authentication, or the increased security of an additional authentication factor.

A dramatic increase in advanced threats, including biometric spoof, or ‘presentation’ attacks, has also prompted organizations to search for authentication factors that can specifically address these risks.

Businesses in verticals that could be subject to fraud, such as online banking and payments but also ecommerce and online gaming, are quickly adopting the technology. Other industries where service providers are increasingly exploring behavioral biometrics include government services, healthcare, the sharing economy and social media. Developers are steadily expanding the application of behavioral biometrics and advanced fraud protection intelligence to all industries that are potentially vulnerable to online fraud.

Behavioral biometrics providers that have conquered a particular segment of the market and are branching out to serve new ones, like ThreatMark, are ready to bring bank-grade technology to new industries, and can show the bona fides.

The market landscape for behavioral biometrics is going through a period of rapid change as leaders emerge. Business adoption is forecast to grow dramatically from 2020 to 2027, nearly quadrupling the market’s size by revenues.

Companies like ThreatMark, which are well-known in their core market, are positioned to make major gains over the near term bringing advanced fraud prevention technology without additional user friction to a wide variety of verticals.

Article Topics

authentication  |  behavioral analysis  |  behavioral biometrics  |  biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  ThreatMark  |  user experience