Australian IT

Biometric lock up

May 27, 2003
By Karen Dearne

BIOMETRICS technology appears ready for mainstream business use following news that software giant Microsoft will sponsor the International Biometric Group's next round of comparative testing.

 US-based IBG has been testing technologies including finger, face, iris, hand, voice, keystroke and signature recognition in real-world conditions since 1998, and is regarded as the industry's leading independent testing body. 

Last month, it announced Microsoft as the official sponsor of round five, starting mid-year. Previous sponsors include Visa, Citibank, American Airlines, EDS and Fidelity Investments. 

Sponsors are rewarded with an exclusive strategic and technical briefing after the completion of testing.

"IBG's role in the biometric industry is critical, helping customers make the right technology decisions by establishing metrics," Microsoft program manager Glenn Pittaway says.

Without doubt, Microsoft is paying attention to the gold rush sparked by US government demands to incorporate biometric identifiers in travel documents by the end of next year.

Projects associated with biometrics in passports and visas are huge in scale. About 500 million people arrive at one of 422 US ports of entry each year seeking admission.

And the General Accounting Office estimates the initial cost of incorporating biometrics into border security could be near $US12 billion ($18.4 billion) in the US alone. 

Next month, IBG will host the first BiometricsWorld Executive Conference, an international gathering in Washington to examine a "global perspective on new standards, technologies and applications".

The true scope of the potential for biometrics can be glimpsed in the US 2003 Government Biometrics Workshop report, released last month.

Representatives from more than 50 US government agencies, including the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the National Institute of Justice and the Transportation Security Administration met to discuss their plans for biometric projects, including: 

Face recognition front-end to FBI mugshot and fingerprint databases to permit searching by profile, rather than specific identity. 

Tracking personnel and shipments on location and in transit using biometrics on a PDA. 

Improved sensor linking to capture faces in a crowd while simultaneously zooming in to obtain high-resolution images of a single face. 

Verification of medical personnel prior to administering drugs or procedures and for access to controlled substances.

Storing iris images in searchable databases for use in law enforcement.

How biometrics change over time: what happens when fingers are scarred, hands develop arthritis, faces "grow fat or wrinkled" and voices become deeper or hoarse.

Biometrics to replace signatures on official documents, to ease the transition to e-government.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is reportedly developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk as part of its anti-terrorist surveillance system.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology claim an 80 to 95 per cent success rate in identifying people from "gait signatures".

In Australia, the highest profile projects are also in airports, border control and law enforcement, although commercial use of biometrics such as iris and fingerprint scanning are increasingly common in businesses for identity verification and access control.

And soon biometrics will be available on every Windows desktop - AuthenTec, a maker of fingerprint recognition sensors, has just announced a deal with Microsoft to integrate software support for biometrics into the operating system.

"AuthenTec will create a reference software driver that will be the example for other biometric hardware makers to follow," says Michael Stephenson, of Microsoft's Windows server group.

"We can now make biometrics plug-and-play compatible. Once the device is plugged in, it will automatically load the driver."

Much of this demand is driven by spiralling identity theft, as well as corporate governance requirements in relation to network access.

John Grimes, director of iris technology vendor Argus Solutions, says there's been a massive surge in demand for iris applications in the workplace, education and even leisure centres.

This second wave of security based on using the eye in place of a password is supported by developments such as Panasonic's small, handheld CCD video camera, called AuthentiCam.

As a result, iris systems are becoming cheaper, and are being deployed for access to office buildings, gymnasiums and even private homes.

Iris systems are also appearing at bank ATMs instead of a PIN, in companies for inventory control, and everywhere from doctors' offices to financial institutions for access to sensitive information on PCs.

"Iris recognition has been commercially available since the early 1990s, and is mainly deployed in situations where there is voluntary enrolment [by users]," Grimes says.

"Because of the accuracy and speed of iris recognition, you don't need a person to be present, which makes it ideal for access control."

Voice and speech recognition are also well established biometric technologies that continue to develop. A lip-reading visual speech recognition application has just been released under an open source licence by an Intel research arm.

Called Audio Visual Speech Recognition, the software is part of Intel's vision and facial recognition library. Reports say it essentially tracks the speaker's mouth movements as sounds are formed.

Other biometric hotspots are forming around hand geometry, dynamic signature verification, even smell.

Unisys Australia solutions director Tony Roulston says no single biometric technology is going to provide an answer for every problem.

He says banks are looking at biometric identifiers in the context of identity theft and fraud, which costs some $4 billion a year in Australia.

"Right now, the greatest single benefit financial institutions could get from biometrics would be to secure their in-house access to systems," Roulston says. "In banks, the enemy within is a substantial threat, and it is very easy and cost-effective to adopt these technologies to prevent internal misuse of data systems."

But, while face recognition systems are proving successful for passport applications, Roulston says to secure a prison he would favour a technology "that's been proven to be far more accurate and that might be iris or fingerprint".

Every challenge has to be considered on its merits.

"The way to do this is through appropriate risk and threat analysis of the transactions and the integration needed to ensure the business outcomes are achieved," Roulston says.

"Issues around biometrics are the same as those faced across the entire information management industry.

"Long gone are the days where providers could take a technology-centric approach - they need a business and consumer-centric approach to the application of technology, and that includes biometrics."