Why Passwords are better for security than using your fingerprints

Why Passwords are better for security

Thumb impression and other fingerprint scanning technologies are wonderfully convenient additions to our smartphones and laptops that enable easy payments and quick device unlocking. However, you should never rely on Touch ID instead of using a password on your device, no matter how convenient it is.

It is acknowledged that Passwords do not provide 100 percent security and can be hacked too and it is difficult to memorize passwords. But as much as we may hate passwords relying on Touch ID for mobile or Lap top security is a much worse option. There are many reasons for this and the most obvious one is that your fingerprints are not some unique secret that’s difficult to come by.

Why Fingerprints are less secure ?

You leave your fingerprints everywhere. They can be picked up off of paper, keyboards, and desk surfaces. You wouldn’t leave your password written down on a sticky-note attached to your monitor at work, would you? If your work is using your fingerprint for authentication, your password is probably on your monitor right now.

And of course, hackers have already shown they can copy users’ fingerprints using several different methods including swiping an image of a fingerprint take from a photo. Other problems with fingerprints include the fact that you can’t just reset them like you’d reset a compromised password and the fact that fingerprints can’t be hashed the way passwords can.

Other reasons..

Another reason for less usage is cost. In this instance cost takes two forms, resource cost and monetary cost. Chances are great that if you have a computer or system of any type (desktop, server, mainframe, distributed, cloud, etc.) it has a built-in authentication mechanism: passwords. The time and money that it takes to bolt-on or integrate biometrics for average uses is too great. Only the most secure environments or data require anything greater than a password.

But biometrics can bring good user authentication only in situations where passwords already provide adequate security. So, there is little economic incentive to deploy biometric devices, especially in a Web context, since this would require expensive devices (nothing purely software; it needs tamper-resistant hardware).