Biometricshas changed in several
significant ways over the past decade, according to a prominent
expert in the field.
Jim Wayman, director of the biometrics test centre at San Jose
state university in California, says that in 1997, the technology
was seen as having huge potential in retail banking. There was
concern over a lack of standards, and experts were expressing
concern about the lack of a scientific approach to testing
biometrics. "All that has changed," says Wayman, with standards and
tests having developed quickly since.
Wayman will review the past decade in his opening keynote
address to the Biometrics 2007 conference and exhibition, held in
London on 17 to 19 October. The event is organised by
Infosecurity's publisher, Elsevier.
He says that banking has largely disregarded biometrics,
following experiments earlier this decade. These included the UK's
Nationwide building society, which tested an ATM cash machine that
used iris-scanning. "Everyone liked it, but Nationwide did not find
a way to make money off it. There has not been a big push," says
Wayman.
"What has happened, which we did not expect then, are the
national
identity systems, the
border-crossing
systems," he said, with the UK implementing both. But even in
this field, some technologies have fallen back: "We did have a US
system we were talking about, using hand geometry - that system has
gone."
Wayman says this is indicative of another major shift, towards
use of fingerprint recognition technology, over the past decade.
Yet he says this biometric has been struggling to reach its
potential for far longer: automated fingerprint recognition systems
first appeared in the 1960s, along with handwriting
recognition.
"It was seen as the best biometric, if people could get past the
stigma" from its association with policing, he says. Even now, its
growth is linked closely to security, such as at borders.
This article was first published on Infosecurity magazine's
web-site:http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/