Strengthen Your Data Protection & Elevate Platform Security With Salesforce’s Next-Gen Biometric Authentication

Cyberattacks are rewriting the rules — and raising the stakes. From classrooms to clinics, no one’s off-limits anymore.

The numbers tell the story⁽ⁱ⁾:

When cyber threats are making headlines, how secure is your data behind the scenes?

The threat landscape is evolving — and fast.

Today, securing sensitive information and ensuring trusted access isn’t a checkbox exercise. It’s the backbone of resilience. It’s time to rethink security, starting with how we verify identity.

That’s where Salesforce steps in. Salesforce offers advanced security solutions, including biometric authentication. By leveraging unique biological traits, this technology verifies identities more securely than traditional passwords, providing seamless protection.

The Salesforce BiometricsService API is integrated into Lightning web components, using a device’s biometric features – such as fingerprints or facial recognition – to confirm identity. This process happens locally, without a network connection, ensuring convenience and security.

In this article, we’ll dive into the growing need for biometric authentication and how Salesforce’s solution enhances security, giving you the tools to safeguard your data, strengthen access control, and ensure seamless user authentication.

Why Biometric Authentication is Essential

With passwords and PINs increasingly vulnerable to breaches, there’s a growing need for more secure and user-friendly authentication methods.

Biometric authentication provides a robust solution that enhances both security and convenience. It allows users to access your app via fingerprint or facial recognition, leveraging the biometric capabilities of their devices. This streamlines the login process, especially after session timeouts, enabling quick re-entry.

By utilizing unique characteristics such as fingerprints, facial features, iris patterns, or voice, biometric authentication confirms a user’s identity. Unlike passwords or tokens, which can be easily misplaced or stolen, biometric data is intrinsically linked to the individual and is difficult to duplicate, making it a highly secure option for industries like mobile banking and healthcare.

For example:

• Quick Re-Access: Users can quickly regain access to the app after being logged out due to inactivity with just a fingerprint or facial scan.
• Increased Security: Ensures only authorized users can access the app, as authentication is based on unique biometric data.
• Convenience: Users no longer need to remember passwords or repeatedly enter login details.
• Session Control: Works harmoniously with features like “Force logout,” ensuring secure access while maintaining user convenience.

Seeing the growing demand for enhanced security and convenience, Salesforce introduced the Lightning Web Component Biometrics Service API. This tool empowers developers to integrate biometric authentication into their applications effortlessly, providing a seamless and secure user experience.

Let’s discuss this further.

Boost Security With Salesforce’s Advanced Biometric Authentication

The Biometrics Service API in Lightning Web Components enables seamless user authentication through a device’s biometric features, such as fingerprint or facial recognition.

The authentication results are then communicated back to the Lightning Web Component, with all biometric checks processed locally on the user’s device – no internet connection is required.

However, this service depends on platform-specific APIs, available only within compatible Salesforce mobile apps.

Let’s take a look at its benefits:

• Enhanced Security: Biometric authentication offers an advanced layer of security, leveraging unique biological traits like fingerprints or facial features, which are nearly impossible to replicate. This dramatically reduces the chances of unauthorized access to Salesforce accounts.
• Streamlined User Experience: By simplifying the login process, biometric authentication eliminates the need for complex, hard-to-remember passwords. Users can log in effortlessly with their biometric data, leading to a more efficient and satisfying experience.
• Reduced Risk of Data Breaches: Traditional passwords are vulnerable to phishing and breaches. With biometrics, businesses mitigate these risks by relying on authentication methods that are far harder to compromise. This keeps sensitive Salesforce data better protected from unauthorized access.

Salesforce delivers robust, built-in security capabilities, including biometric authentication through Salesforce Mobile, leveraging the latest in mobile device technology.

Here’s how Salesforce strengthens user authentication:

• Salesforce Mobile App:

The Salesforce Mobile app integrates with native device biometrics—fingerprint and facial recognition—to enable secure, passwordless login. This ensures a fast, frictionless authentication experience while maintaining high security standards.

• Salesforce Authenticator:

Salesforce Authenticator enhances multi-factor authentication (MFA) by combining push notifications with optional biometric verification. By linking to device biometrics, it adds an extra layer of protection, helping organizations meet stringent security and compliance requirements.

Expanding Security with Third-Party Biometric Integrations

Beyond native capabilities, Salesforce can integrate with advanced third-party biometric solutions to secure the platform. These integrations allow you to adopt sophisticated biometric technologies for enhanced user authentication and data protection.

• Okta: As a leading identity and access management platform, Okta supports biometric methods like fingerprint, facial, and voice recognition. Integrating Okta with Salesforce delivers a smooth, secure authentication process, ensuring that only authorized users access sensitive data.

• Ping Identity: Ping Identity offers biometric authentication capabilities that can be seamlessly integrated with Salesforce. This integration allows businesses to enhance user authentication with methods such as fingerprint and facial recognition, creating an additional security barrier to safeguard Salesforce environments.

• Auth0: Auth0, a flexible authentication platform, supports various biometric methods. By connecting Auth0 with Salesforce, businesses can utilize fingerprint, facial, or other biometric recognition for robust user authentication. Auth0’s extensive security features further ensure that only authorized individuals access critical Salesforce data.

Architecture and Design

• Biometric Module: The BiometricsService JavaScript module is designed to interface with native biometric hardware on devices, such as fingerprint sensors, facial recognition systems, and iris scanners, enabling secure biometric authentication.

• API Integration: This service integrates seamlessly with Salesforce Lightning Web Components (LWC), providing a set of methods to facilitate and manage the biometric authentication process effectively.

• Local Authentication: All biometric data is processed locally on the user’s device, ensuring that sensitive information never leaves the device or is exposed to external servers, maintaining the highest levels of data security.

Extending Biometric Authentication to External Stakeholders

Salesforce’s biometric capabilities can be extended to authenticate not only internal users but also customers, partners, and leads through Experience Cloud and Lightning Web Components (LWC). This ensures a secure and unified experience across all external interactions.

• Experience Cloud: With Experience Cloud, businesses can create secure, branded digital experiences for external users. By integrating biometric authentication, you can guarantee that only verified users gain access, boosting security and trust.

• Lightning Web Components (LWC): LWCs enable businesses to build custom interfaces that incorporate biometric authentication. For example, a custom login component with fingerprint or facial recognition offers a consistent, secure authentication process across all touchpoints.

• Single Sign-On (SSO): SSO with biometric authentication simplifies the login process for external users while maintaining high security standards. With a single biometric credential, users can access multiple applications and services within the Salesforce ecosystem without compromising safety.

Industry-Specific Applications of Biometric Authentication in Salesforce

Businesses across industries are increasingly leveraging biometric authentication in Salesforce to drive security, efficiency, and user experience. Here’s how:

Strengthening Security and Efficiency in Transactions

Financial Applications: Financial firms are utilizing biometric authentication to secure high-value transactions and protect sensitive account data. Financial institutions are integrating biometric authentication into Salesforce, using tools like Auth0 to secure high-value transactions and protect sensitive account data. By enabling seamless login experiences for partners and clients, they reduce password-related support tickets, minimize friction, and enhance operational efficiency.

Healthcare Applications: Healthcare organizations are embedding facial recognition into their Salesforce-powered doctor portals to secure patient records. This ensures only authorized personnel can access sensitive data while providing healthcare professionals with a frictionless, secure login experience—improving data protection and user satisfaction.

Enforcing Conditional Access

Secured Record Access for Legal and Government Sectors: Legal and government entities handling sensitive data can benefit from biometric authentication by enforcing conditional access to critical records. For example, legal professionals accessing confidential client documents or government agencies managing classified records can ensure only authorized individuals have access, reducing the risk of unauthorized viewing and ensuring compliance with stringent data protection regulations.

Role-Based Access Control for IT and Manufacturing: IT firms and manufacturing companies can implement role-based biometric authentication within Salesforce to provide tiered access based on employee roles. This ensures that only managers or senior personnel have access to critical business data or advanced features, while other employees have restricted access. Such control adds an extra layer of protection for intellectual property and business-critical data.

Automating Custom Workflows

Streamlined Processes for HR and Retail: Biometric authentication can be integrated into Salesforce workflows to automate key processes across industries. HR teams and retail organizations are embedding biometrics into Salesforce workflows to automate user onboarding, validate contract approvals, and authenticate high-value transactions. The result: faster, more secure operations, reduced manual errors, and improved turnaround times for critical processes.

Seamless Integration with Other Services

Cross-Platform Access for Technology Firms: Tech companies dealing with multiple platforms and services can enhance their security infrastructure by integrating biometric authentication across third-party apps through Salesforce. This approach enables a unified and secure experience for users as they navigate between different applications, ensuring smooth cross-platform access without compromising security.

Single Sign-On (SSO) for Large Enterprises: Enterprises that rely on numerous business applications can combine biometric authentication with Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions to offer employees seamless, one-touch access to all necessary tools. This improves convenience, enhances productivity, and reduces security vulnerabilities caused by password breaches, allowing organizations to manage access at scale.

Conclusion

Biometric authentication is an essential strategy for securing your Salesforce environment. Whether you’re tapping into Salesforce’s built-in features or integrating third-party solutions, it’s a reliable way to protect sensitive data while giving your users a smooth experience. Also, by extending these safeguards to customers, partners, and leads through Experience Cloud and Lightning Web Components, you’re covering all your bases when it comes to security.

The Salesforce BiometricsService API takes it a step further, ditching outdated passwords for seamless biometric authentication. By embedding biometric authentication directly into Salesforce Lightning Web Components, it eliminates outdated password dependencies, accelerates login workflows, and strengthens compliance efforts. The result? A security architecture that is intuitive and resilient against modern threats.

To ensure a smooth rollout of biometric authentication, keep these best practices in mind:

• Test on multiple devices: Make sure your solution runs smoothly across different devices and Salesforce environments.
• Always offer a fallback: Provide alternative authentication options in case users run into issues with biometrics.
• Stay updated: Keep up with the latest BiometricsService API updates to leverage new features and ensure top-notch security.

By following these steps, you’ll boost security, simplify the login process, and create a Salesforce environment that’s both secure and hassle-free – keeping your data safe while making things easier for your users.

Statistics Reference:

⁽ⁱ⁾ Check Point