Amazon is bringing its palm-based identity service to the world of corporate security.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced Monday (Nov. 27) the debut of Amazon One Enterprise, a contactless security tool designed to grant entry to places like offices, airports, hotels and educational facilities.
“Today, organizations authenticate employees and other authorized individuals to access buildings and software resources through physical means like badges and fobs, or digital methods like PINs and passwords,” the company said in a news release.
“However, these traditional methods share common security vulnerabilities. Badges and fobs can be lost, shared, cloned, or stolen, while PINs and passwords are easily forgotten, guessable, or shared.”
The release also notes that traditional authentication methods often also require manual verification and credential management, plus the cost of producing physical IDs. And forgetting or losing badges, PINs and passwords can lead to wasted time and productivity.
AWS contends that Amazon One Enterprise eliminates operational overhead associated with managing traditional authentication methods.
“IT and security administrators can easily install the Amazon One devices and manage users, devices, and software updates in the AWS Management Console,” the release said.
The launch comes as people are growing increasingly accustomed to using biometrics, at least when it comes to making purchases.
According to “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Biometric Authentication in the Age of Mobile,” a PYMNTS Intelligence collaboration with AWS, close to 60% of the U.S. consumers who made online purchases in the month prior to being surveyed used biometric authentication to validate their transactions.
“Biometrics adoption is even broader when purchasing on mobile devices, with 8 in 10 consumers across every generation using this method,” PYMNTS wrote last week. “Facial recognition and fingerprint scans are the most widely used biometric methods for validating online transactions on mobile devices.”
Meanwhile, PYMNTS spoke recently with Entersekt Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder Dewald Nolte, who said the “stars are aligning” for wider use of biometric authentication.
“People are getting used to logging into their favorite apps on their smartphones using biometrics daily, and using Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and those kinds of wallets using biometrics to activate that payment, it is fairly well adopted in the market,” he said.
The final “piece of this magic combination,” Notle added, is that traditional technologies, such as one-time passwords (OTPs), are being exposed as inadequate, fueling demand for more secure alternatives.
“We’re seeing very successful phishing campaigns in instances where these OTPs are being stolen,” Nolte said.
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