InformationWeek put out a thoughtful piece this week called "The Tug of War Between Biometrics and Privacy." In it, journalist Carrie Pallardy highlights that "Biometrics offer major security benefits, but the technology also comes with big questions about privacy."

The piece starts by establishing that biometrics can be a "quick, effective key that outshines traditional security measures such as passwords" for authentication because "you are who you say you are, and you carry that indelible proof with you at all times."

Then piece seeks to answer "How can enterprises and consumers balance the benefits of biometrics with its privacy risks?" Afterall, if biometrics like fingerprints are compromised, you can't reset them like you can a password. So with 176 million Americans using face biometrics, per a report cited in the article, how do we deal with the dangers of storing such uniquely valuable PII?

"Four leaders with expertise in privacy and biometrics speak to InformationWeek about its use cases and preserving privacy." One of those experts was Badge Co-Founder, Dr. Tina P. Srivastava.

She shared her personal story of being the victim of identity breach, discussed in the InformationWeek piece, and how it motivated Dr. Srivastava and her team of MIT PhDs to solve the problem in a new way. Instead of building higher walls around crown jewels (i.e., stored biometrics), Badge found a way to eliminate the storage of biometrics and remove the vulnerability entirely.

The article discusses the increasing attack vectors targeting crown jewels like biometrics, citing AI and deepfake attacks, and highlights the increasing regulatory "patchwork" across the states, both of which make storing biometrics increasingly untenable.

Finally, InformationWeek's piece discusses the future of safeguarding biometric information, with a focus on data minimization principles and privacy-preserving technology like Badge's to eliminate the secret storage.