If there’s one thing the technology world loves, it’s the battle over competing standards. Ever since the showdown between VHS and Betamax in the late 1970s, the battle over standards has repeated itself over and over again, as new emerging technologies attempt to convince consumers to adopt them instead of another. Think of the Browser Wars or the current battle between Android and Apple iOS. The next big battle over standards could be between the fingerprint and the heartbeat as the preferred form of biometric authentication.
Currently, of course, the fingerprint — via innovations such as Apple’s Touch ID – reigns supreme as the premier way to authenticate digital devices. This makes sense, given that fingerprints are used universally as a form of authentication. They have been used for more than 100 years to identify people (mostly criminals). Researchers have shown that a person’s fingerprints do not change over time, except in extreme circumstances (like leprosy).
via The heartbeat vs. the fingerprint in the battle for biometric authentication – The Washington Post.
