AMD Ryzen Mobile processors are about to gain support for hardened biometrics security due to AMD’s collaboration with Synaptics, a leading maker of fingerprint sensors.
Match-In-Sensor Security
Synaptics’ “Match-In-Sensor” biometrics sensor solution promises a major upgrade in security for fingerprint sensors, due to the fact that it’s completely isolated from both the host processor and the host operating system.
The Match-In-Sensor solution comes with its own System-on-Chip (SoC) and storage, in which an abstract representation (not the fingerprint image itself) of the fingerprint can be stored and protected. Because the sensor doesn’t interact directly with the host OS, that means the attack surface is significantly reduced.
The only thing that that is communicated between the sensor and the host OS via encrypted channels is the “match score” that is determined by the fingerprint reader algorithms. A higher score would show a closer match to the template, while a lower one would indicate a poor match.
AMD And Synaptics Partnership
Future AMD Ryzen Mobile laptops will ship with Synaptics’ next-generation FS7600 Match-in-Sensor. Synaptics announced last month that this chip is now production-ready and that it’s expected to ship in products in Q3 this year. The chip also supports Microsoft’s Windows Hello authentication protocol.
Saeid Moshkelani, corporate vice president & general manager, Client Compute Business Unit, AMD said:
“At AMD, security is a top priority. As part of our ongoing commitment, hardened biometric security is a critical requirement for our next-generation Ryzen Mobile platforms. We are excited to be working with Synaptics and Microsoft in a collaborative effort to develop and deliver one of the most secure Ryzen Mobile platform to date.”
Synaptics’ fingerprint sensors are also available with the SentryPoint security suite of tools, which include adaptive fingerprint template matching and authentication, support for the TLS protocol with AES encryption and ECC authentication, as well as anti-spoofing technology that can distinguish between a fake fingerprint and a live one.
