2014 will also see Voice Biometrics becoming mainstream. Apple have paved the way for biometrics to be adopted in a mainstream manner with the introduction of fingerprint readers on the iPhone. Voice Biometrics is a tremendously powerful, intuitive technology that can be implemented in a low-friction and invisible manner and provide very strong security in particular when implemented as part of a multi-layer approach. I believe we will see at least one major global financial institution deploy voice biometrics in broad scale in 2014, paving the way for mass adoption in the financial services sector.

To come back to the persistent identity theft issue, a powerful weapon already exists that can help win the battle against those who steal our personal data. Context awareness enables this capability and will be at the heart of successful authentication solutions. Context awareness provides the capability to place an individual in proximity to a transaction that is being performed, in real-time. Such capability exists today and can be performed in a highly privacy sensitive manner. The power of context awareness as part of the risk decision process is immense and enables the capability to counter identity theft. Bearing in mind that the US is the largest non EMV country in the world, and consequently suffers the highest levels of fraud, deployment of real-time proximity correlation can virtually eliminate fraud at the ATM or Point of Sale (POS), and as important, prevent the decline of legitimate transactions which is one the most frustrating experiences for the consumer. I believe that 2014 will see wholesale deployment of context aware proximity correlation in the financial services sector.

To summarise, in 2014 I believe that the winners will be those organisations who focus on deploying strong multi-layered, context aware authentication solutions that are for the most part invisible to the end-user and therefore enable an intuitive user experience. Successful companies will provide a seamless customer experience in which the authentication process is commensurate with the perceived risk of the transaction. I look forward to seeing which companies are the first to get this important balance right in the New Year.