Chatbot are widely used today by multiple companies and organizations across the financial technology, banking, eCommerce provider, and customer support sectors. This tool automates customer interaction and saves time by reducing live human interaction. According to the Salesforce State of Service, Fourth Edition, the rate of adopting chatbots grew by 67% from 2018 to 2020.
Chatbots are applications that perform human-like conversations through text and/or text-to-speech. These applications can easily be integrated into websites, messaging applications, and voice response systems to attend to customers around the clock, even during off-hours. Chatbots are typically used to perform the following tasks:
- Answer inquiries
- Process transactions
- Book appointments
- Other routine tasks
Multiple organizations have already experienced the usefulness of chatbots in their day-to-day operations, but there are still risks when using them. Bad actors can exploit this technology to become a gateway to infiltrate a network and extract confidential data. The exploitation is possible since many organizations still use KBA or knowledge-based authentication systems to keep chatbot sessions secure.
KBA systems typically require users to provide their usernames and passwords to verify their identity and grant authorization to access a portal. The premise of knowledge-based authentication is that only the real person knows the information necessary to authenticate their identity. However, data leaks can compromise security by leaking the authorized users’ login credentials.
Once bad actors have access to a user’s login details, they can then use them to retrieve valuable data that chatbots handle. Among these data are the following:
- Credit card information
- Bank account details
- Social security number (SSN)
- Other personally identifiable information (PII)
Should a web user’s credentials be stolen, a criminal will easily have access to their accounts and sensitive information. However, an extra layer of security will be present to safeguard a user’s data should organizations use biometrics for online identity verification to confirm a user’s identity when chatting.
Shoring up chatbot security using biometric identification alongside other authentication methods significantly reduces the risk that chatbots will interact with anyone other than the true account owner. Biometric identity authentication continuously verifies a user’s identity every time they use chatbots, not only during the user’s initial login. Improving chatbot security using biometric identification not only allows users to be secure but also streamlines the authentication process, so users no longer need to use a different device for two-factor authentication if an enterprise abandons this authentication method.
Relying on a reputable provider of IDaaS or Identity as a Service platforms like authID allows enterprises to benefit from their wide-range multi-factor authentication services and replace their dated KBA systems. Read more on the importance of replacing these old systems with biometric authentication for chatbots. Click here to see authID’s article on upgrading a chatbot’s IQ by seamlessly identifying customers through biometrics.