Biometric authentication is a user identity verification process that uses a biologically unique identifier to authenticate the user. Identifiers can be a fingerprint, hand contour, voice, iris, retina, face, etc.
Biometric authentication typically requires an initial enrollment phase during which reference biometric data is registered. Once a reference is established, the authentication process involves comparing the presented biometric data to the reference data. If there is a match, then authentication will succeed, else it will fail.
Biometric authentication is generally acknowledged as providing a high-level of protection because it is hard to steal or transfer biological material or features from one user to another. Because implementing biometric authentication typically requires additional hardware sensors, the cost of biometric authentication was historically prohibitively expensive for many use-cases. But in recent years those costs have gone down, making biometric authentication possible for many more applications.
Learn about the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach to authentication
