A study undertaken at the RSA security conference last week has found that security professionals are starting to switch to biometric authentication, but more needs to be done in the age of password hacking.

Undertaken by security firm Veridium Ltd., the survey found that 56 percent of respondents rely on password managers to help them remember passwords and nearly 30 percent use 21 or more passwords at any given time.

Nearly half of respondents said they’re now using biometrics for two to three applications, but only 5 percent are using it for seven to 10 applications. None of the security pros said they were using biometrics for 11 or more apps.

Some 41 percent of respondents who took the survey at RSA said that they would like to use biometrics the most for work, while 93 percent agreed that there should be greater legislative restrictions around biometric privacy and data.

“Results from the security audience demonstrated why we need to eliminate passwords and how biometrics can ensure consumer data privacy,” a spokesperson for Veridium said. “With password managers full of countless keyword variations and the majority of respondents putting biometrics to use only across two to three applications, there’s a need for stronger, more engrained authentication options.”

Discussing the findings and his time spent at the RSA Conference, Chief Executive Officer James Stickland said that many conversations focused on security for application programming interfaces, which should be a bigger focus in the next year.

“Security is now, more than ever, ‘identity-centric,’ focusing on the individual rather than the broader enterprise – with employees acting as the ‘perimeter of their business,’” he said. “It’s critical that organizations secure their data, implement data-driven policies and authenticate individual access to the enterprise.”

Stickland added that as the use of personal biometrics rises, users will ask for it in the enterprise as well. “This year, we will see an increased enterprise and midmarket focus on biometric maturity and deployment, as it’s increasingly valued and understood,” he said.

U.K.-based Veridium was last in the news when it raised $16.5 million in funding in June.

Photo: neccorp/Flickr