India-West

IBG Rides Biometrics Wave After 9/11

February 20, 2004
By Richard Springer

Along with the rest of the biometrics industry, brothers Raj and Samir Nanavati, partners in the New York-based consulting firm International Biometric Group, were "thrown artificially into the spotlight" after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

In the latest example of how security concerns have moved events more quickly than previously thought possible, at the beginning of the year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began tracking millions of arrivals to the U.S. under US-VISIT, which takes finger-scans of both index fingers and digital photographs of every visitor to the U.S.

About 90 percent of the biometrics companies are still not profitable because they were not allowed to "grow naturally," Raj Nanavati told India-West recently.

"They developed good technologies, but they didn't have the time to develop the skills to take that technology and learn how to deploy it for clients (profitably)."

That is where IBG comes in. A private company that has received no outside funding, the company is in the remaining 10 percent - turning a profit by serving as an independent source for government agencies and businesses that want a dispassionate opinion on which technologies work or how they can be integrated into existing operations.

Fresh from testifying at Congress about biometrics and recently profiled in Newsweek magazine, Nanavati is much in demand because his company keeps up-to-date on new technologies and has tested a wide variety of biometric systems.

Consulting and integration of biometrics technology for government agencies constitutes about 50 percent of IBG's business. The White House, the Federal Aviation Administration and the federal departments of State, Energy and Justice are just some of the company's clients.

One consulting project, for example, advised the World Bank on how a fingerprint system could be implemented in India to allow illiterate people to gain access to ATM's. The company also provides reports, for various fess, on assorted biometric technologies.

IBG has an informative page in its press kit that lists products and companies IBG has evaluated since 1999, when finger-scan companies, and to a lesser extent, facial recognition firms, were dotting the security industry landscape.

In IBG's testing in February 2001, for example, the company evaluated keystroke dynamics, signature biometrics and voice authentication products, in addition to new facial recognition and finger-scan companies. Iridian, which dominates in the field of iris recognition, was tested in August 2001, along with new voice authentication, facial recognition and finger-scan companies.

Asked which biometric system is more accurate, Nanavati said a great deal depends on how advanced the system is and how it is implemented. "Theoretically, the iris is more accurate because (unlike in a finger-scan system), you don't get a dirt build-up in the eye. "You get a lot of information in the furrow (of the eye). You get a lot of information."

He cautioned that there is a big difference between a single-finger scanning system for computer access costing about $30 and a top-line fingerprint system used by law enforcement agencies.

When a skilled fingerprint technician using an advanced system takes a full set of fingerprints, by rolling the fingers and getting a complete image, they get error rates that are substantially less than one percent.

"They're very, very accurate in terms of making sure the correct person is who they say they are and not falsely identifying people," Nanavati told Newsweek recently.

Facial recognition technology is not as reliable as fingerprinting, because people can change the appearance through aging, loss of weight, by growing a beard, etc.

One of the few profitable companies in the biometrics business is Recognition Systems, which sells hand geometry authentication devices. "They do about $10 million a year (in revenues). It is a very simple product about the size of a toaster," Nanavati told India-West.

"It is for physical access to a building and to check time and attendance. It is just to make sure you are the person you claim to be."

When Brazil recently instituted fingerprinting of visitors solely from the U.S. it was "retaliatory," he said, but in terms of other countries concerned with border security, Nanavati believes reciprocity is "understandable and acceptable."

"If we're requiring people from non-visa countries to be fingerprinted when they come into the United States, then requiring that U.S. citizens are to be fingerprinted when they come through their country in my eyes seems reasonable," he told Newsweek.

Civil liberty worries that the world is becoming more like George Orwell's "1984" is a concern for Nanavati also.

"We have developed a web site, www.BioPrivacy.org, where we frame the issue with objective criteria," he said. The site aims to raise awareness of privacy issues and increase the likelihood that biometric techniques, when deployed, will be "as protective of personal and informational policy as possible," the site says.

"If I am using a voice system to order things at K-Mart, I have control over it," he said. But Nanavati has problems when there is no "third-party oversight." For example, he believes authorities went too far at last year's Super Bowl, when facial recognition was used to check for outstanding warrants.

But to think that personal information is not already widely available is naive, he pointed out. "Master Card knows more about what I've done in the last 25 years than I know myself. They even know even what shampoo I buy."

Not all countries will accept the same security systems. "In Australia, you are only fingerprinted when you are a criminal," so there is less tolerance of finger-scans, he pointed out. In fact, they are now looking at face-scanning technology.

Nanavati has an undergraduate degree in biology from Tufts University and a law degree from Tulane. "The law degree has really been invaluable in this business," he enthused.

He got into the biometrics business sort of by a back door. Put in charge of instituting a voice-recognition system for Chase Bank that enrolled about 12,00 customers, he left the bank after the project was "put on hold" when Chemical Bank was acquired by Chase.

Navavati kept getting calls - both from banks on how they might deploy a similar system and by biometrics companies on how they could position themselves to the financial firms.

He recruited his brother, Samir, who has a background in database coding and programming and formerly worked at Deloitte and Touche, and the two brothers have slowly built the company to about 30 people, with more hiring planned for 2004. Biometrics is definitely the field for the decade ahead, Raj Nanavati told India-West.