Your smartphone’s built-in fingerprint sensor is not as secure as you think
With the latest technological up-gradation, fingerprint sensors have turned smartphones into extra smart and have given a hand to miraculous convenience. Now with only a touch of your finger, you can unlock your phone- how cool it is, isn’t it?
A touch of a finger unlocks your device and for that, no password is required to be put in from your end. This also justifies that you need not remember your phone’s password and the chances are almost negligible of you forgetting the password of your device. Now with these updates, everything seems a tap away.
Since the inception of these pocket-friendly devices, the major game changer was the introduction of mobile biometrics. These became the turning point as they were not limited to PINs, patterns or numeric passwords. People became more dependent on mobile biometric recognition features which majorly include fingerprint sensors and face unlock as well. They have become a wholesome way of device security with identity authentication.
People are overwhelmingly relying on their devices fingerprint sensors to secure their phones. Many cell phone manufacturers are putting the main emphasis on the strong biometric authentication. However, your phone’s built-in fingerprint sensor is not as secure as you think.
The main reason why phones in-built fingerprint sensor is not secure is that your fingerprints are all likely covering your phone and it wouldn’t be a big issue for the criminal to copy your fingerprint when your phone is stolen. Also, there are several malware to infect smartphones and if by any chance your device gets infected the malware can capture your fingerprints.
The fingerprints which you are using for your devices right now is permanent and we all know that fingerprints don’t change. So it is likely, that the criminals while obtaining a fingerprint from your phone will likely be able to steal your identity and commit crimes for decades. It is like you have 30 passwords and the criminal has one strong match.
Moreover, the phone’s built-in fingerprint sensor has an alternative of pattern or PIN. For example, to unlock your phone, you can choose not to use fingerprint and go with pattern lock. This makes the entire high security thing void, as the strong fingerprint authentication of the phone is of no use if someone gets access to your pattern or PIN. Modern hacking technologies and malware are capable of spying over your phone to get access to your pattern or PIN easily.
In addition to that, anyone having your pattern or PIN, can enroll his/her fingerprints on your phone and use it as their own. You will be lucky if you are able to disable your SIM card before the hackers wipe off your bank accounts from your stolen phone.
The fingerprint sensor we usually get in our office, banking, law enforcement, air travel counters and departmental stores are different from what we get in our phone devices. Here, only a small portion of your fingertip can be fit on the scanning area. Due to the size being small they capture and process a limited portion of the fingerprint of your fingertip which may not be fully secure and this is the reason why they are backed by alternate device security like PIN or pattern.
Among all types of biometric recognitions which are available on today’s devices, a fingerprint sensor is the most popular model. Biometric fingerprint authentication is increasingly replacing pattern or PIN-based security methods and is acting as an identity authenticator for several online apps like banking, shopping and various other services.
The safest way to secure your phones credentials is by introducing an external fingerprint device for your phone for carrying out sensitive transactions such as logging into websites, apps related to work or finances. Byteseal’s Personal Authentication Device is engineered keeping in the users’ security and convenience in mind. The device is compact and can be carried anywhere by the users. the device also has Bluetooth interface so that users can easily connect the device to their phone or PC without having to use any wires.
Smartphones built-in fingerprint sensors are not sufficient for high-security identity authentication and are partly doing a good job of maintaining the security of the device. An external and additional layer of security will make a great change in qualifying the requirements for the security aspect.
