When designing Entrust Biometric Authentication, the company acknowledged some realities critical to the marketplace, senior director of product management Rima Pawar said. These included Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) impact and the importance of ease of adoption.
Entrust Biometric Authentication blends biometrics with adaptive risk-based authentication to reduce fraud while replacing passwords, OTPs, and security questions with low-friction user experiences. It deploys three authentication methods, depending on the perceived risk level.
Biometric Passkey binds authentication to a verified human identity. Face Authentication replaces one-time passwords with a biometric check. Motion Authentication uses advanced liveness detection to confirm a human presence in critical moments.
Pawar said fraudsters have moved beyond login to attack multiple points in the customer journey, such as account recovery, device changes, and large transactions. Credit the mass-market availability of AI-aided fraud tools that make impersonation attacks convincing, scalable, and accessible.
Those tools help criminals bypass traditional authentication controls like passwords, one-time passwords and security questions.
“They were not designed to defend against today’s AI-driven fraud threats and the increasing sophistication of account takeover attacks,” Pawar said.
Passwords are easily scraped at scale. Fraudsters scour social media posts for clues revealing passwords. Large-language models help them.
That has helped criminals migrate to also exploit password resets, access recovery, high-value transactions and device replacement. A true response must include verifying the person behind the transaction.
“The landscape is changing, and so are we,” Pawar said. “As we’re working with our customer base, especially in finance and regulated industries, this is what they’re seeing.”
Pawar said financial services firms led this shift. They told Entrust they needed stronger identity assurance as AI-enabled fraud evolves across all access points. Market pressure also played a role, as global regulators increasingly push for more phishing-resistant authentication solutions.
How Biometric Authenication works
When first interacting with the system, users take a selfie that becomes an electronic-based template available for customers to save on their device, on-prem, or in the cloud. Once onboarded, it facilitates a biometric-issued passkey. During any subsequent high-risk moment, the user may be prompted to certify their identity with a face capture that is matched with an encrypted token. Depending on the client’s risk determination, the solution can also deploy motion through head turns.
“Giving the customers that flexibility depending on the risk is the driving factor, and something the customers have given some positive response to,” Pawar said.
Liveness detection helps combat injection attacks. Pawar said biometrics also help to detect edge use cases like user coercion. A known face recognition system designed to combat impersonations offers another level of protection.
“It’s a whole new world of fraud detection powered by AI models,” Pawar said.
With AI-enabled fraud progressing quickly, and many financial services firms steps behind relying on legacy infrastructure, Pawar said Entrust had to consider ease of implementation in its design. Rather than replacing infrastructure, Entrust Biometric Authentication easily fits in the existing technology stack, thanks to zero-trust architecture.
The fear of having to “rip and replace” scared many customers. Pawar said this more measured approach allows companies over time to develop roadmaps.
Meaningful friction’s still important
Have customer friction tolerances changed over time? Pawar said that meaningful friction at the right times brings assurance.
“The end users are with us on this,” she said. “Research is unambiguous; biometrics are the most convenient and trusted authentication method by a wide margin.”
Tomorrow’s three security pillars
Pawar said three facts will define the next generation of information security. There will be a shift from credentials to proof of personhood. Goodbye passwords. Hello biometric passkeys.
AI versus AI is the new battleground as GenAI industrializes fraud through the scaling of synthetic IDs and attack automation. AI defences are essential protection against AI attacks.
Authentication is no longer a single step at login. It is now continuous throughout the customer journey.
“Throughout the life cycle of the identity, a robust framework is required for security, especially with new (AI) agents,” Pawar said. “Securing agents and tying them to proof of personhood behind these agents is becoming critical.
“Biometric authentication solutions are best positioned to make that linkage.”