Multi-factor authentication market to reach $5.45 billion by 2017
28 August, 2013
category: Biometrics, Corporate, Digital ID, Government, Health
The two-factor authentication market will touch $5.45 billion by the year 2017, predicts MarketsandMarkets. The report looks at the market by authentication type, application and geography and predicts a compound annual growth of 17.3%.
Multi-factor authentication refers to user and employee authentication that uses two or more verifying authentication techniques – hardware token, one-time password (OTP), password/PIN, biometrics, etc. Multi-factor authentication has become an integral part of personal and enterprise security due to increase in unauthorized access, fraud, border intrusion and more.
To account for this, multi-factor authentication is being deployed at all the major security checkpoints at airports, commercial complexes, retail malls, banks, financial institutions and others. Multi-factor authentications value lies in its ability to provide accurate authentication along with a minimal margin of duplicity or error.
MarketsandMarkets’ report also details the various technologies, both biometric and non-biometric, including how hardware and software tokens, OTP (One Time Password), and biometric recognition that are being used for different applications. These techniques can also be combined to form two, three, four or even five-factor authentication models.
Of these models, two-factor authentication is the most commonly used for security applications. Also the oldest form of MFA, two-factor authentication is currently being employed at banks, ATMs and various government offices.
The report also sheds light on the various market applications of MFA including government, banking and finance, travel and immigration, defense, consumer electronics, commercial security and healthcare. MFA technology is steadily permeating all industries where security is a top concern.
While the two-factor model dominates the current market at nearly 90% – most of which are for banking, finance, travel, immigration and commercial security – three, four and five-factor authentication models remain comparatively underutilized.
The report reveals that three-factor authentications typically consist of one of smart card with PIN and biometric technology, smart card with two biometric technologies, PIN with two biometric technologies or three biometric authentications. Meanwhile four and five-factor authentication employs the use of smart card and PIN with more than one type of biometric technology be it face recognition, fingerprint recognition, voice recognition, etc.
For more from MarketsandMarkets, see the full report here.
