Multimodal biometrics for
strong authentication
For increased security, a combination of biometrics, also called multimodal biometrics, provides greater accuracy and more flexibility than a single biometric. BioID thus offers a combination of face and eye traits, which can be captured at the same time, for greater fraud protection and an easy user experience. You simply look at the camera and both facial and periocular traits are captured; the biometric authentication software analyses your face and eyes in a single process. Each trait is analyzed separately and given its own score. The results are combined using a fusion algorithm to provide a single yes/no decision. Depending on the application and channel, a combination with additional factors (e.g. geolocation, device-ID) may be selected.
Multimodal biometrics offers several benefits:
- Accuracy: more accurate than any single biometric trait; high level of convenience AND strong security at the same time.
- Fraud resistance: it’s harder to fake multiple traits (especially at the same time) than a single one.
- Flexibility: if one trait changes or is obscured, for instance because of a medical mask, the other traits compensate.
- User acceptance: higher user acceptance when user is given more than one choice.
Naturally, biometrics may also be combined with other authentication factors to create a stronger multifactor authentication system. To meet the need for platform independence as well as to reduce total system cost, the BioID Web Service is sensor independent and can be used with any smartphone or laptop camera.
Thus, BioID delivers a biometric authentication solution that can verify the presence of the live user while handling the challenges of security, user experience, BYOD and platform independence, and can do so consistently across multiple channels.
Our well-designed multimodal biometric system recognizes persons with greater reliability. Because the eye area is especially rich in detail, BioID’s eye (periocular) biometrics is a new and unique capability, which enables strong authentication even when parts of the face are obscured. The combination of static (physiological) and dynamic (behavioral) traits guarantees not only a high degree of security from falsification and unauthorized use, but also protects the privacy rights of users – for instance if they must say their name or a pass phrase, they cannot be identified without their knowledge. In case of suspected unauthorized use, the user can invalidate the stored reference template at any time, simply by creating a new reference template with a new pass phrase.
