There is hope on the horizon that the field of identity protection will continue to evolve and improve. It appears that the next generation of working adults is championing the use of new and enhanced methods of security.
Late last month, IBM announced the release of its Future of Identity Study, which reported (and I quote):
- Security outweighs convenience: People ranked security as the highest priority for logging in to the majority of applications, particularly when it came to money-related apps.
- Biometrics becoming mainstream: 67 percent are comfortable using biometric authentication today, while 87 percent say they’ll be comfortable with these technologies in the future.
- Millennials moving beyond passwords: While 75 percent of millennials are comfortable using biometrics today, less than half are using complex passwords, and 41 percent reuse passwords. Older generations showed more care with password creation, but were less inclined to adopt biometrics and multifactor authentication.
- APAC leading charge on biometrics: Respondents in APAC were the most knowledgeable and comfortable with biometric authentication, while the U.S. lagged furthest behind in these categories.
While the U.S. is found to lag, improvements in online security can’t seem to come fast enough because the very means of proving our online identities (i.e., passwords, social security and driver license numbers, and the like) are proving to be easily hacked.
Just last week, CNN Money reported, that Equifax likely lost a whole lot more of our personal information to hackers than it had previously admitted at the time of the breach. Anyone who was paying attention last fall, when the story first broke (in fact, I covered the topic here at the time), figured as much.
Obviously, the use of biometrics and multi-level authentication would not have stopped breaches like the one perpetrated at Equifax. But, the ability of hackers to use the stolen information to hack into a victim’s other online accounts can be greatly reduced when advanced measures, like biometrics, are put into place. Fortunately, millennials appear to be embracing these advanced measures, and will create the demand for more.
To close, continued improvements in authentication and online security practices are sure to come. In fact, we are already seeing many businesses incorporate more advanced security practices into their digital strategies. It’s encouraging that it is the computing preferences of younger adults that will continue to drive the methods and technologies needed to protect our personal information.
Reach out to me if you’d like to discuss some ideas about how to rethink your organization’s digital strategy.
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