A recent study from LexisNexis indicates that the number of retailers who offer customers a mobile commerce option has doubled in the past year — but m-commerce fraud is growing even faster.
On average, for merchants who accept mobile transactions, 14 percent of their transactions come through the mobile channel, the study found. Unfortunately, 21 percent of the fraud that hits those merchants comes by way of mobile — including fraudulent transactions and fraudulent refund requests.
For financial institutions, merchants, and payment providers who want to accelerate mobile transactions – want a secure always on continuous authentication and fraud detection solution that is frictionless and balances convenience, security, and privacy.
What is behavioral biometrics?
Behavioral biometrics or behaviometrics is a form of biometric authentication that has shown promise to address the continuous frictionless authentication problem by allowing the device to identify the user without the user doing any explicit authentication actions while providing a strong form of authentication. Behavioral biometrics identifies users based upon their behaviour rather than upon fixed physical characteristic (such as a fingerprint). Behavioral biometrics learn patterns in user behaviour in order to build a user identification model and authenticates the user based on whether their behaviour conforms to the recorded model of the user behaviour.
There are three basic kinds of behavioral biometrics: continuous, secondary and task-based. In continuous behaviometrics, the user is continually monitored for unusual behaviour. Secondary behaviometrics monitors the user while they are performing a primary authentication task, such as entering a PIN. Task-based behaviometrics monitor users while they perform a routine task, such as a swipe.
Task-based biometrics have the advantage that they can work implicitly, in that they can authenticate a user without taking any explicit authentication action (unlike secondary behaviometrics), while also allowing for very rapid authentication decisions i.e. single interaction will authenticate a user (unlike continuous behaviometrics).
Behaviometrics leverage muscle memory users exhibit while doing common tasks. The more common/repetitive the activity, the easier it will be to characterize normal behaviour and consequently easier to detect anomalies.
Despite the high fraud costs, m-commerce merchants are still keeping overall fraud costs low, but that’s mainly because of the relatively low volumes. That’s not sustainable as m-commerce volumes increase, though. Behavioral biometrics and contextual behavioral analytics will play an important role fighting m-commerce fraud by fitting in seamlessly into existing architectures and business models without causing unnecessary friction – either to consumer experience or to business operations.
To learn more about Zighra’s behavioral biometric solutions:
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