Why small business owners are turning to a new breed of biometric security

Three in five small businesses struck by a cyber attack will go out of business within six months, according to a recent report by the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. The research is so alarming they’ve also released a Small Business Cyber Security Best Practice Guide to help small business owners and decision makers expose the issue of cybersecurity and recommend best practice principles and actions to protect your business.

The guide’s key protection tactics include:

Patching applications by installing security updates;

Using complex passwords and two-step authentication; and

Limiting access to administrator accounts and sensitive information.

It also recommends small businesses familiarise themselves with more advanced protection techniques to improve their cybersecurity. That’s where a new breed of biometric security comes into play. These tools, such as facial recognition and fingerprint technology, are helping business owners fight back against cybercrime by using an individual’s characteristics to prove identity and in turn adding a greater level of assurance.

It might all sound a little sci-fi, but these biometrics are well and truly finding their place in your everyday workplace thanks to the added level of security they offer business owners above traditional passwords. While the technology has been around for more than 25 years, only now has it been made more accessible thanks to modern advances. The key players currently being adopted include:

Fingerprint scanner – you most like already use this one to open your smartphone. It’s currently one of the most popular forms of biometric security thanks to its low implementation costs.

Facial biometrics – straight out of sci-fi film, these new biometric scanners can also identify unique features on a person’s face to ensure that individual alone is granted access to the protected data.

Eye scanner – this system compares the blood vessels behind the whites of your eyes to identify an individual. It’s already being used by a few major US banks to create more secure logins for their mobile apps.

Voice recognition – from the blood vessels behind your eyes to the pitch of your voice, special voice recognition software records your individual voice pattern to grant the person with the correct tone, pitch and volume access.

Protecting data is one thing, protecting your workforce is another, and biometric scanners can play a part there too by offering accurate information on the location of your workforce. This adds significant security benefits to remote or home-based workers, as well as those on the road.

Some scanners can also provide accurate information about who enters which part of the building and when – a huge benefit when seeking accountability should you face a complication or issue.

The latest Intel 8^th Generation Processor doesn’t need any more proof to take a hardened approach to cybersecurity. It’s augmenting traditional password protection with biometric measures to improve security for you and your business. Facial recognition, fingerprint, Bluetooth phone proximity, protected PIN, and logical location using Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT) enable multifactored solutions for Intel 8th generation processor based computers.

While these features may conjure notions of spy thrillers and James Bond-style espionage, Kochie’s Business Builders tech expert Val Quinn suggests it’s sophisticated yet easy to implement.

“Intel-based laptops these days have a feature called Windows Hello, which provides a more personal way of signing into your Windows 10 computer,” Quinn explains.

“The computer uses your laptop’s camera to scan and locate landmark features on a user’s face such as the location of the eyes, nose and mouth and maps this data. It couples this with an algorithm to build a representation. No image of my face is actually ever stored, it’s only a mathematical representation. This model is then used to unlock your computer.”

Couple this with a pin number and this type of password is referred to as multi-factor authentication.

“It adds another layer of security to your data that cannot be duplicated,” Quinn says. “Not only is this a cool way to login to your device, it makes it much more secure!”