Most consumers said they would use a multi-purpose identity credential to verify who they are before accessing data, systems and physical locations. Consumers in the U.K. and U.S. cited convenience as the most important benefit of such a credential, while German respondents were more likely to name security.
Banks are best
Across the board, survey respondents ranked banks as the best at online validation, strong authentication and identity verification, and thus, the best authority to issue and manage a multi-purpose identity credential. Other trusted authorities included credit card and Internet payment providers, health care providers, telecom companies and postal and delivery services.
Split on devices
In the U.S., consumers preferred to use their mobile devices for identification purposes. In the U.K., consumers preferred radio frequency identification (RFID) chips; in Germany, biometric authentication was most popular.
Lest we forgetMost authentication failures happen because we forget. Respondents cited forgotten passwords, forgotten user names and forgotten answers to authentication questions (for example, mother’s maiden name) as the most frequent causes of authentication failure.
