Biometric Data Theft on the Rise: Facial Recognition Passwords Now at Risk
In the rapidly evolving digital landscape of the 2020s, the focus is shifting from protecting login credentials to safeguarding faces, voices, and presence. This new era of cybersecurity is marked by the emergence of advanced technologies designed to combat the growing threat of identity theft and deepfakes.
Liveness detection tools, a key innovation, verify the presence of a real human by checking for micro-expressions, unnatural lighting, skin texture, moiré patterns, and signal integrity. These tools are instrumental in distinguishing between a real user and a sophisticated AI-generated fake.
The use of biometric data is becoming increasingly prevalent, and with it comes the need for compliance. Biometric Licensing might require users to sign digital contracts allowing their face or voice to be used by platforms, apps, or services, possibly with compensation. Companies should trace where biometrics appear in their pipeline before new regulations demand consent, licensing, and takedown requests for faces and voices.
Denmark has taken a proactive stance in this matter, passing a new AI law that treats an individual's likeness as personal property. This law requires consent for AI training using biometric data, allows takedowns of fakes, and necessitates AI systems to explain how they use high-risk data like faces.
Technology is also employing various strategies to address this threat. ID liveness checks, voice biometrics, behavioural biometrics, IP intelligence and risk analytics, cryptographic watermarks, and labeling for media content are all being utilised to ensure authenticity.
behavioural biometrics, for instance, analyse how a person types, moves a mouse, or interacts with a screen, patterns that are hard to fake because they come from muscle memory, not appearance. Voice biometrics can spot inconsistencies in tone and cadence to detect when an AI is faking speech.
In the future, we might see the emergence of Likeness Insurance, similar to identity theft protection, for everyday users. Authenticity layers, such as watermarking, digital signatures, and C2PA, are becoming the standard for proving authenticity and will soon be table stakes for trust and liability protection.
Ihar Kliashchou, the Chief Technology Officer at Regula, has been at the forefront of this movement. He has contributed to the development of guidelines and frameworks for addressing issues related to synthetic identities and deepfakes, focusing on ethical, legal, and technological aspects. He also advocates for a dual verification approach, apart from the biometrics check, verifying the authenticity of cryptographic certificates.
The world's first Identity Rights Movement could be sparked by Denmark's law, focusing on protecting user identities, not just data. As we navigate this new frontier, businesses should consider adding liveness checks, cryptographic signatures, or licensing terms that respect identity as digital property to build trust with users. The future of cybersecurity lies in safeguarding our digital identities, ensuring privacy, and fostering trust in the digital realm.
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