There was a time when the phrase "biometric authentication" would only be heard in the forensics department. But now it has made its way into our everyday lives. Without even paying attention to it, we use it multiple times every day. When you clock in your office, when you unlock your phone, or when you unlock a door. Biometric authentication is becoming more and more ubiquitous with each passing day.
But if we take into account all the biometric modalities, we find out that fingerprint authentication is way more popular than all the other modalities combined. It has made a lot more room for itself not just in the market but also in people’s lives. It has more acceptance. People are still dubious about the other modalities. Here are a few reasons why.
First Come, First Served
Fingerprint authentication has been in existence for almost a century now. It has been exhaustively used to identify individuals at crime scenes. Forensics has had a very beneficial relationship with fingerprint technology.
Fingerprinting is also famous because it was with us at the time when everything was being done manually. Due to its large-scale usage and due to its help in finding the perpetrators of crimes, it has gained mass recognition almost all over the world.
Connection With Tradition
What do you do when you have to enter your home? You take out your key, insert it in the lock and turn it. You hear the satisfactory click or clang, and you’re in your house.
Similarly, when you need to log in to your PC or some application, you insert a password, a pin, or draw a pattern. And when you’re in a hotel, you use a key card.
The common thing here is that we use our hands to unlock stuff. The other modalities of biometric technology are too far away from what we’re used to. Hence the confusion and the hesitation in using them. Fingerprinting is the logical next step. We are doing something new but there’s also something traditional in it for us. This is another reason why it is more popular than the other modalities.
Familiarity in Public
Thanks to all the TV shows and movies, almost everybody in the educated world is familiar with this technology while the other modalities have just started their stint in showbiz. Because of this familiarity, people are far more relaxed when using fingerprint technology as compared to others like iris recognition, facial recognition, or their mostly unknown sibling gait recognition technology.
High Security at Low Cost
Another reason for the popularity of fingerprinting is that it provides a high measure of security at a relatively low cost. People are always losing their keys or ID cards or forgetting their passwords, PINs, or patterns. With fingerprint recognition technology, they don’t have to worry about the cost of having these things made again and again nor do they have to face the inconvenience of resetting their passwords, PINs, or patterns again and again. This technology is the perfect combination of convenience, low cost, and high security all rolled into one package.