Does Your App Give You the Finger?

You know the feeling, right? But rarely will your app give it to you first… until now.  Before Touch ID, logging securely into apps with a username and password required users to experience the annoying “big finger little button” effect. Now, you simply touch your iPhone’s Home button and apps that support Touch ID will quickly and conveniently log you directly into your app. We are excited to announce that we have now implemented Touch ID in the latest release of the Broker BackOffice (BBO) iOS app found here!

Convenience vs Security
The #1 reason BBO implemented the Touch ID technology is simply convenience. Each time I log in to the BBO app, it takes me between 25-30 seconds on average. I have a long username, complicated password, and BBO has an additional layer of security utilizing a verification code via SMS message. When using the Touch ID feature in BBO, it takes me around 2 seconds. If you logged into BBO once a day (excluding holidays and weekends) using Touch ID vs manually typing, you would save about 105 minutes a year. That’s almost as much time as watching the new Star Wars, “The Force Awakens”, which will be released 12/18/2015!

While Apple’s press release described Touch ID as a ‘simple and secure way to unlock your iPhone’, the biometrics hacking team from Germany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) was able to trick Touch ID by using an elaborate process to create a fake fingerprint from an existing fingerprint. The likelihood of a hacker exploiting this against most people is relatively low, but it was an important factor when applying our Threat Risk Modeling phase of our development process. Apple has since continued its dedication to biometrics and security through additional patent filings, as reported on AppleInsider. This patent demonstrates an additional level of security beyond just fingerprints. It’s a combination of fingerprint and passcodes and/or patterns, which would be more difficult to ‘crack’. We will continue to monitor these developments.

Companies such as American Express, LastPass, Navy Federal Credit Union, Authy, Bank of America, BillGuard, and Dropbox utilize Touch ID for authenticating users, which demonstrates the technology’s industry adoption in a wide array of business sectors. BBO has decided to embrace this technology and will watch it closely as it evolves.

Our team of technical experts are constantly evaluating cutting edge technologies on our customer’s behalf. In concert with user feedback, analytics and internal product managers, our mission is to utilize modern and appropriate technologies that enhance our customers’ experience in all software we build.

Download the latest update and start saving time today! We hope you enjoy giving ‘the finger’!