Various security vendors nowadays offer technology that uses fingerprints and retinal scans as a second factor or even as a primary factor of authentication. These are hard to spoof and see increased adoption on mobile devices thanks to hardware vendors like Apple and Samsung. This type of biometric data also raises privacy concerns, and worse, often introduces more friction for users in the authentication process.

Introducing Snap of a Finger Authentication

Instead of having to scan a fingerprint or an iris, OneLogin recently announced its industry breakthrough “Snap-of-a-Finger” feature that allows end-users to log in by simply snapping their fingers. OneLogin collaborated with Computer Science Professor Allan A. Stamos, Behavioral Biometrics expert at the University of Michigan, to implement a new authentication technology that can detect an individual’s snap with nearly 99.999% accuracy. A joint study that originally focused on side-channel attacks on common multi-factor authentications methods, yielded a surprising result proving that an individual’s unique fingers create a non-reproducible acoustic fingerprint.

“Some people think that we developed Snap-of-a-Finger with a snap of our fingers, but it has been in stealth mode under our OneLogin Labs Division. It took over 18 months and countless blisters,” said Thomas Pedersen, CEO and co-founder, OneLogin.

Logging in is a Snap

Snap-of-a-Finger or “SaaS” authentication (Snap-as-a-Service) as dubbed internally, was made available to beta testers using a OneLogin mobile app that leverages the already popular voice assistants Siri (iOS) and Cortana (Android). A desktop version that will run in the desktop browser is currently in development.

“We’ve been snapping since late 2015”, said Josh Friedman, Director of IT, at Slim Networks, and an early beta tester. “It’s saved our company hundreds of hours and headaches in eliminating password resets and multi-factor solution rollouts, and has been surprisingly consistent. I usually only have to snap one time and I’m in.”

More Information

For more information on OneLogin’s new “Snap-of-a-Finger” feature, please visit our Twitter page. Customers who are interested in testing the new product are encouraged to reach out to their OneLogin sales contact.

This April Fool’s Day announcement was brought to you by OneLogin, the identity management provider bringing speed and integrity to the modern enterprise, and a firm believer in bringing humor to the industry and workplace. Happy snapping.