ON-DEMAND: The 2024 Year in Preview

“The good news is, there’s job security for the biometric digital identity space,” Most said.

This week, FindBiometrics hosted its first online event of the year: The 2024 Year in Preview. The event took the form of an expert panel discussion, featuring Acuity Market Intelligence Principal Analyst Maxine Most and FindBiometrics Editor in Chief Alex Perala.

Hosted and moderated by FindBiometrics President Michael Siggins, the discussion’s aim was to uncover and analyze the key trends shaping the biometrics and identity industry this year. To that end, Maxine and Alex found much to discuss, including:

The Rapid Ascent of Artificial Intelligence

Noting that you can’t check your newsfeed “without seeing some kind of, like, sort of shocking and almost frightful analysis of what’s happening with AI,” Most also found some amusement in the fact that AI has played a central role in biometrics for years.

The Threat of Deepfakes

Both panelists agreed on the significance of the deepfake threat, with Alex Perala noting that a multinational company has already lost millions of dollars from fraudulent wire transfers that were directed by a malefactor who had cloned the CFO’s face and voice in a video call.

“The good news is, there’s job security for the biometric digital identity space,” Most said.

The Zero One Fallacy

Maxine Most emphasized the need to move beyond binary thinking in identity security. A framework that simply looks for a yes/no match for a username and password is no longer sufficient in the world of AI and deepfake presentation attacks. IT and security decision makers are coming to realize that “they have to embrace threshold-based and risk-based analysis” that leverages a range of security signals for authentication and verification.

The Accelerating Evolution of the Industry

The panelists also zoomed out to look at the big picture of the biometrics and identity industry, and talked about the question of how to understand its many moving parts. To that end, Most highlighted the Prism framework that she has established in collaboration with the FindBiometrics editorial team—a comprehensive landscape overview that seeks to track the industry in real time.

“Part of the reason it’s not like this rigidly structured hierarchical diagram is ’cause that’s not how the industry works, right?” Most said, asserting that interrelationships between various players and sectors are vital to understanding the business landscape.

Many more insights can be gleaned from the video below—and from the flagship Biometric Digital Identity Prism Report. This line of research is ongoing, so if you are a professional in the biometrics or digital identity industries, make sure your organization’s perspective is shared by filling out a Prism survey.

Watch the 2024 Year in Review with Maxine Most and Alex Perala:

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March 21, 2024 – by the FindBiometrics Editorial Team