Cloud computing technology has taken the business world by storm. Private or public, the goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services. Since the onset of COVID-19, we are seeing a faster increase in adoption, with the cloud becoming an inescapable part of everyday personal and professional life. By 2025, it is estimated that there will be over 100 zettabytes of data stored in the cloud. To put this in perspective, a zettabyte is a billion terabytes or a trillion gigabytes.
As cloud computing and SaaS adoption continues to rise, it raises the question of the role the cloud could play in biometric technology.
Changing approaches to infrastructure
According to a statement made by CTO Mohamed Lazzouni, to Biometric Update in a recent interview, there are two forces slowing down biometric adoption: major compliance burdens and business change. Organizations dealing with major compliance burdens, from financial services to law enforcement, are hesitant to try anything new that may result in a step out of line with their regulatory regime. “All of a sudden now you have to interact with a provider that offers you something that requires you to transact within our cloud,” Lazzouni describes the change. “Now that data starts to migrate from your system to someone else’s system where you need to now have some control over their mechanism of doing things, their governance of the process and whatnot. That creates natural anxiety and friction.”
Biometrics providers must choose between traditional and more innovative, cloud-native approaches to reassuring their prospective clients of the safety of the cloud, says Lazzouni. The latter involves concepts like zero trust, zero-knowledge, and distributed nodes, which he says Aware uses to demonstrate that it can deliver on its compliance and security commitments.
Securing the cloud
Architecture and education are the keys to winning over businesses that can benefit from moving to cloud biometrics implementations, Lazzouni says. There is always some hesitance on the part of customers to make any change that may involve risk, but “You can solve the problem via architecture and technical toolkits.” Early movers tend to be those with the most pressing and well-defined problem. In this case, that is financial services companies and fintechs. They need to rely on individuals operating their own, nonstandard devices, which “Brings with it a whole slew of interesting challenges.”
These companies’ customers are extremely varied in terms of comfort with those devices, and solutions must accommodate their circumstances. Companies are ultimately happy, however, to pass on the burden of removing friction from the process. “When the fintech industry realized that they can hire the products and services of companies such as Aware, or the combination of Aware and FortressID to attack these problems and do it well,” says Lazzouni, “then you can now see [the reasons for] the match and the speed of adoption.”
Improve security with ease with Aware
Biometric technology adoption has seen substantial growth in the past few years. Companies are actively seeking to improve their security by incorporating MFA or passwordless solutions. With this growth, however, comes an obligation biometrics providers have to the industry, citizens and stakeholders to honor their commitments, enhance safety and security “so they can trust us with their biometric data,” Lazzouni cautions. They must also be respectful of privacy, while helping with innovative business models “that make these solutions palatable, affordable and create value for stakeholders.”
For businesses looking to incorporate biometric technology with the advantage of using the cloud, Aware’s platform is built to be deployment agnostic. Our products are customer-first, meaning they can be easily configured to meet a variety of needs. From desktop to mobile applications, our products have the capability to be utilized for various use cases.