In today’s world of remote or hybrid work, it is important that companies take control of whoever has access to their most secure information. Today’s hackers are becoming increasing sophisticated, putting your company’s data at risk of falling into the wrong hands and potentially costing millions of dollars in revenue loss. According to the latest data breach report by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, the cost of an individual data breach is more than $4 million. This is a 10% increase from the average cost in 2019 which was $3.86 million—and this is against a backdrop of the cost of global crime exceeding $6 trillion. It’s very clear that access control measures need to be revamped immediately to reflect today’s new normal and the continuing challenges that security professionals face.
Access control defined
Access control is defined as a method of guaranteeing that users are who they say they are and allowing them to have appropriate access to specific physical locations or digital data. It is a selective restriction of access comprised of two components: authentication and authorization. Authentication is a technique used to verify that someone is who they claim to be. However, authentication alone is not sufficient when it comes to complete protection. Authorization adds an additional layer and determines whether or not a user should be allowed to access the space or the data.
Whether you are a small business or large organization, controlling access to your data or physical infrastructure is integral to security. Robust access control allows companies to:
- Limit liability and damage from attacks
- Carry out anomaly tracking
- Increase accountability
Additionally, access controls are central to data privacy-related regulations and zero-trust security. The zero-trust security model requires users to have both authorization and the requirement to authenticate themselves before they can access or modify any systems or data—and they must continue to do so in order to maintain access.
Biometrics as a solution
The use of biometric technology was already on the rise but has increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This increase has resulted from the demand for stronger authentication combined with an even greater demand for contactless solutions. In fact, biometric technology is an ideal solution for today’s security challenges.
This is because biometric technology relies on unique characteristics like facial and voice recognition, fingerprint, or iris scans to verify an individual’s identity. When paired with artificial intelligence, the technology becomes even more secure. In addition, face, voice and iris modalities allow for contactless and/or remote enrollment and authentication—perfect for today’s hybrid workforce.
Consider Aware for your access control solution
If you are a business of any size looking to refine your security infrastructure, both physical and cyber, consider implementing one of our state-of-the-art biometric solutions into your current systems. For example, WebEnroll™ provides browser-based biometric enrollment and leverages our best-in-class BioSP™ for data management. Combined, you can capture biographic and biometric data, manage workflows and data formatting, and leverage other important utilities to support large-scale biometric systems.
Or perhaps Knomi™, our biometric authentication framework would best suit your needs. The Knomi framework provides secure and convenient facial and speaker recognition for mobile, multifactor authentication.
Whether you’re looking for a turnkey system or software development kits, for cloud-based or on-prem, we have authentication offerings that can help simplify your access control and security through biometric technology. To learn more about how our offerings can help you—and to tap into the expertise of the authentication company—contact us below: