The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has successfully rolled out a new security mechanism for Aadhaar based fingerprint authentication.
The new security mechanism uses a combination of both finger minutia and finger image to check the liveness of the fingerprint captured. The new two-layer authentication is adding add-on checks to validate the genuineness (liveness) of the fingerprint to further cut down the chances of spoofing attempts thus making authentication transactions even more robust and secure.
The new security mechanism has now become fully functional. With the new system in place, only finger image or only finger minutiae based Aadhaar authentication has given way to the robust two-layer authentication.
This new security feature will strengthen the Aadhaar enabled payment system and curb malicious attempts by unscrupulous elements and will be particularly useful for banking and financials, telecom and government sectors delivering welfare benefits and services to the people.
By the end of December 2022, cumulative number of Aadhaar authentication transactions had crossed 88.29 billion and clocking an average per day transactions of 70 million. A majority of them are fingerprint-based authentications, indicative of its usage and utility in daily lives.
India’s Aadhaar is the most sophisticated and the largest biometric ID system in the world. It is available to all residents of India.
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