Embodiments of the present invention provide an improvement to conventional biometric authentication systems and techniques by providing an innovative system, method and computer program product for thermal enrichment of biometric authentication data to generate a high-confidence verification of user identity. A collaborative system for receiving data and continuously analyzing the data to determine emerging patterns is provided. The invention provides for the enrichment of biometric authentication data with thermal imaging data in order to discern between authentic data samples in contrast to inanimate copies or models. Furthermore, the invention is designed to detect and analyze liveliness of data samples as a means of authentication.