With the increasing use of digital devices, cyber crimes are also rising rapidly. AI-powered technology has made it even easier for criminals to commit fraud and social engineering attacks than before. To address these challenges, an advanced security solution known as “Behavioral Biometrics Solutions” is the top recommendation that can protect from these security issues. It not only enhances security for both organizations and users but also improves their overall experience.
What is Behavioral Biometrics?
Behavioral biometrics is an advanced security solution that analyzes and differentiates the unique interaction patterns of users with digital devices to identify them. Unlike traditional biometric authentication methods (fingerprints, face scans, or iris recognition), behavioral biometric authentication focuses on how a person interacts with their device rather than their physical traits (face, fingerprints, and eye retina). These interacting gestures can be keystroke dynamics, mouse movements, touchscreen swipes, and even how they hold a smartphone. These behavioral gestures are difficult to replicate and develop over time. In this way, behavioral biometrics provide better protection against fraud and unauthorized user access.
The behavioral biometrics solution continuously runs on the device in the background to monitor users’ activity to detect anomalies that could indicate cyber threats. The behavioral biometric authentication technology adapts in real-time, offering passive, frictionless authentication that doesn’t require the user to perform any additional action. As digital fraud rises, modern businesses and organizations increasingly rely on behavioral biometrics to strengthen security while maintaining a seamless user experience.
Why Is Behavioral Biometrics Needed?
Continuous Authentication
In finance, protecting against scams and illegal fraudulent activities, behavioral biometrics plays a crucial role in continuous authentication. It operates in the background to ensure that users remain authenticated throughout their session, not just at login. Instead of relying on static credentials or physical biometrics, behavioral biometrics monitors patterns in typing speed, mouse movements, touchscreen gestures, and other unique behavioral traits of the user.
If any anomalies are detected, such as behavior that deviates from a user’s usual interaction style, the system can prompt for re-authentication or even end the current session. This makes behavioral biometrics an effective, non-intrusive solution for maintaining security in real time.
Fraud Prevention
As we know that, fraudsters often rely on stolen credentials, bots, or scripted attacks to bypass online security. The behavioral biometrics can detect these fraudsters by identifying their suspicious activity, depending on how the original users interact with a device. For example, if someone exhibits the account and its detected different mouse movements, typing speeds, or touchscreen gestures than those of the legitimate user, the system can flag it as potential fraud.
Additionally, behavioral biometrics can detect and block fake accounts or automated bot activities, particularly in online banking, e-commerce, and financial services. By continuously analyzing the behavior, organizations can proactively detect fraud attempts and take immediate action before becoming victims.
How Does Behavioral Biometrics Work?
Behavioral biometric authentication analyzes how legitimate users interact with a device. It continuously monitors unique activities such as typing speed, mouse movements, touchscreen gestures, and even how the user holds a device. Behavioral biometrics verification performs all these tasks without requiring the user to perform any action. Here is how it works:
- Behavioral Data Collection: When users interact with a website, mobile app, or device, the system starts gathering behavioral data. This includes keystroke dynamics, mouse movement and clicks, touchscreen gestures, and how the user holds the device.
- Behavioral Analysis: With the help of advanced machine learning models, this collected data is then matched and compared with the previous user interactions. This makes the system capable of detecting even the slightest deviations that may indicate fraud or unauthorized access.
- Risk Scoring: The system generates a behaviour score depending on how closely the current user activity matches with previous activities. This score helps understand the risk levels, provides confidence about the user’s authenticity, and suggests whether additional authentication is needed.
- Real-Time Fraud Detection: In case an unusual behavior is detected, such as unusual keyboard strokes, erratic cursor movements, etc., the system can terminate the session and require relogin or may demand additional security measures, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Types of behavioral biometrics
Behavioral biometrics are mainly categorized into 4 physical activities to focus on for identifying the authentic user. There are:
- Keyboard Behavior: This analyzes and monitors how a user types, including rhythm, speed, and pressure on keys. It also tracks the shortcuts used by users to perform specific tasks.
- Mouse Behavior: To detect users through mouse behaviour, the system focuses on monitoring mouse movements, click pressure, and scrolling behavior.
- Touchscreen Interactions: This includes scrolling speed, pressure applied on the screen, and touch gesture patterns to analyze and distinguish users.
- Device Holding & Movement Behavior: The authentication system uses data from the gyroscope and accelerometer to track how a user holds and moves their device.
Types of Fraud Behavioral Biometrics Can Detect
Behavioral biometrics solutions help detect various types of fraud by analyzing user interactions and identifying behavioral anomalies. By continuously monitoring how users engage with devices and applications, behavioral biometric authentication can prevent the following types of fraud:
- Application Fraud: To perform such fraud, cybercriminals use stolen personal information to impersonate the original individual and create fake accounts. Behavioral biometrics can detect abnormal behavior like fast application submission, unnecessary copy-pasting of personal information, or fast form filling, etc.
- New Account Fraud: In financial institutions, fraudsters by using advanced technologies, can successfully create accounts to conduct fraudulent activities. Financial institutes can detect suspicious accounts by analyzing automated machine-like or robotic behavior.
- Bot & Automated Fraud: Behavioral biometrics can detect unnatural machine-like behavior and human interactions. Using this authentication can prevent those attackers who use bots and automated systems to perform malicious activities.
- Account Takeover (ATO) Fraud: Cybercriminals can gain unauthorized access to someone’s account by stealing their sensitive information through phishing, malware, or data breaches. Behavioral biometrics though continuously monitoring the user activity can prevent an organization from being the victim of ATO fraud.
How are Behavioral Biometrics Better than Physical Biometrics?
In many ways, behavioral biometrics provide better security and user experience than old traditional physical biometrics. Physical biometrics rely only on unique physical characteristics that can be a user’s voice, face, eye retina, or fingerprints. No doubt, these biometric features are difficult to copy, especially when using MFA. But the criminals can use advanced tools or techniques to steal or impersonate these features. Also, this verification technique only requires the user to verify their identity once during the login procedure. If an unauthorized person gains access, they can do whatever they want. A behavioral biometric solution can detect such persons by monitoring their suspicious activities.
Behavioral biometrics track patterns in how a person interacts with a device, like typing speed, mouse movements, or even how they hold their phone. If anything detects suspicious activity, the system will terminate the session or may prompt to verify their identity again. Also, behavioral biometrics offer continuous, passive authentication, meaning users stay logged in without needing to re-verify their identity.
Are Behavioral Biometrics Right for Your Organization?
In today’s digital landscape, there are many tools available to facilitate fraudsters with advanced features to accurately replicate any human face, voice, or other biometric features. This raises a question about the online security of any organization and demands a new, accurate, and more secure authentication solution.
Behavioral biometrics, with its amazing efficacy and more secure ML-based algorithm, remains active in devices to monitor any suspicious activities. It focuses on multiple behaviors and is impossible for humans to copy or deceive the security system.
Using behavioral biometrics in conjunction with other biometric systems will ensure the security of an organization and play a crucial role in building user trust.
