Biometric-enabled Single Sign-on

The business case for biometric-enabled SSO is straightforward:

• enterprise SSO is compelling for enterprises
• biometric SSO removes the key objection
• match on card technology makes biometrics acceptable.

The likelihood is that a medium-to-large enterprise has already either implemented enterprise SSO, or has developed the business case - perhaps more than one case - to a reasonably detailed level. The chances are that some progress has already been made in the direction of reduced sign-on, depending the composition of the current application portfolio and the position along the technology refresh cycle.

The default position for SSO is the single password. This immediately brings up the key to the castle issue, the realisation that a single password may make sign-on faster, but at the price of compromised security. A recent Gartner report* suggests that about a quarter of SSO implementations use stronger authentication.

Biometrics (fingerprints) is the ideal solution here. It is generally considered a stronger authentication technology than the real-world use of passwords. In turn, we believe that match on card technology is the answer to many of the issues that employees may have over the introduction of biometric ID management in the workplace.

*Gregg Kreizman. Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Single Sign-On. 18 September 2008. Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00160413. Accessed 19 May 2009. http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/ca/160413.html