JumpCloud survey finds over half of SMEs using biometrics after sudden leap in adoption

Enterprise software company JumpCloud has unveiled findings from its Q2 2022 Small and Medium-Sized (SME) IT Trends Report, including a number of biometrics-related trends.

Building on findings from its first release in June 2021, the research showcases how, two years into the transition to hybrid-remote workplaces, employees are becoming better ‘partners’ in securing company data and their organizations are investing more in IT.

As far as biometrics are concerned, the JumpCloud report described a sharp increase in adoption, with 55.9 percent of surveyed admins saying their companies currently require biometrics (against 22.3 percent in 2021).

Biometric technologies also ranked highest as the most secure step for multi-factor authentication (MFA), but a sizable part of respondents (37.6 percent) said they also are the hardest to implement.

In terms of personal use, the vast majority of admins (74.5 percent) said they relied on biometrics to secure their devices through a variety of modalities.

These included fingerprint (52.9 percent), facial recognition (31.7 percent), and voice recognition (10.1 percent). Only 4.9 percent of them said they used some form of liveness detection.

More generally, an increasing number of respondents (62.6 percent in 2022, 58.1 percent in 2021) across SMEs agreed that adding security measures usually means a more cumbersome user experience. Consequently, 62.6 percent of those surveyed also confirmed passwordless authentication is a priority for their company.

“From complicated tech stacks to the downstream impact of global events, IT admins are working to secure and simplify workflows in less-than-ideal circumstances,” explains JumpCloud CEO Rajat Bhargava.

“As IT teams sound the alarm about increased threats, SMEs should acknowledge these professionals are needlessly juggling a sprawling tech stack that isn’t efficient or cost-effective and that introduces unnecessary risk.”

The study surveyed 1,007 IT decision-makers in the U.S. and UK across a variety of industries.

The results of JumpCloud’s latest report are available for free.

Article Topics

access control  |  access management  |  biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  enterprise  |  JumpCloud  |  multifactor authentication