A UK bank serving more than 14 million customers has been testing BioCatch’s behavioral biometrics technologyand is getting ready to expand its use.

NatWest has been trialing the tech with some of its business customers since the start of the year, and it’s evidently going well. In a statement, NatWest Chief Administrative Officer Simon McNamara said the technology “has played a crucial role in strengthening our security systems,” adding that “[t]he breadth of behavioural biometrics that BioCatch technology can monitor is really impressive and we’ve already seen many examples of it alerting us to suspicious activity and protecting our customers from fraud.”

The BioCatch platform analyzes over 500 specific metrics of user behavior including things like finger movements and hand tremors in order to authenticate and to ensure that they are humans and not bots or other forms of malware. It’s part of an emerging field that includes rivals like NuData’s NuDetect platform, with behavioral biometrics poised to become a potentially widespread means of authentication, at least as one layer of security, in the future.

In the near term, NatWest is planning to bring BioCatch security to its personal banking customers later this year.

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November 17, 2016 – by Alex Perala