Dear readers,

The biometrics industry has been promoting its technology as an ideal replacement for "tired-old, easy-to-forget" passwords for decades.

Of course, something as big as password replacement was never going to be that easy to achieve - and to be frank, the technology probably wasn't good enough in those early days. (Actually, while the technology and underpinning software is vastly improved today, and multifactor authentication using personal devices seems to be the order of the day, we still believe that liveness detection must be made better if the industry is to be able to hold its head high.)

But with continual news of stolen username/password data, plus the requirement for users to dream up, and remember, literally dozens of passwords on a frequent basis - there is a distinct groundswell of opinion that something must be done to improve the current unsatisfactory situation.

Just this week it has been revealed that a Russian group has hacked 1.2 billion usernames and passwords belonging to more than 500 million email addresses. Would more widespread use of biometrics have prevented or at least diminished this sort of hack?

Certainly it seems the public is ready for a change. We report this week that some 79% of Brits are ready to ditch their passwords in favour of biometric security, such as fingerprint scanners. Underpinning this shift in attitude are factors such as the huge sales of Apple?s iPhone 5s, which has acclimatised consumers with its Touch ID fingerprint scanner.

Meanwhile, there is a powerful movement happening in the guise of the FIDO Alliance. Its impressive list of members is growing by the week, and the aim is to enable strong authentication technologies such as biometrics to be used as a password replacement online.

Let's be clear, it is unlikely the password will ever disappear completely - and it has some very strong attributes - but times are changing and the biometrics industry will play a major role.

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