But like the microwave and Velcro, biometrics has trickled down into everyday life. The healthcare sector is increasingly adopting it for drug dispensing, and for identifying patients and users. Biometrics systems are installed in work places to keep track of time and attendance, while consumers see fingerprint readers integrated into portable computers and storage devices.
According to a report titled "The Future of Biometrics" by research consultancy Acuity Market Intelligence, the biometric market will experience sustained expansion through to 2017 with a compound annual growth rate of 19.69 percent.
The growing uptake of biometrics in enterprises and businesses will see commercial deployment revenues matching the public sector by 2014, then surpassing that market by 2017, taking over 55 percent of the global market for biometrics core technology.
While the story behind this growth is certainly interesting, biometrics faces its own set of challenges as it finds its place in the mission-critical world of security. Doubts remain regarding its suitability as a drop-in replacement for the key, PIN or password, but perhaps biometrics, despite its unique capabilities, was never meant to be the last word in security technologies.
Behind the biometrics boom
The acceleration of the biometrics sector has not gone unnoticed by manufacturers. As recent as August 2010, 3M announced its acquisition of Cogent, which provides finger, palm, face and iris biometric systems to government, law enforcement and commercial clients. In its announcement, 3M cited a US$4 billion global biometric market with a projected growth rate of greater than 20% per year.
DigitalPersona is a global provider of endpoint protection solutions and biometric authentication products for enterprises, government agencies and software vendors. Jim Fulton, the vice president of marketing at the company, says fingerprinting is seeing mainstream adoption due to a reduction in costs of components.
“Swipe-style fingerprint readers in notebooks and phones are rapidly dropping in price and have significantly improved in performance in the past year. This is accelerating adoption and customer awareness,” Fulton says.
He says developments on the software side are also making the technology more accessible and reliable. “New generations of fingerprint recognition algorithms are now available that enable high-performance verification and identification to be implemented in ever-smaller embedded devices,” Fulton explained.
“Developers of face recognition systems are continuing to work on reliability and the ability to handle the wide range of lighting conditions that are typically encountered by mobile users.”
Biometric Innovations is an Australian company which designs, develops, integrates and delivers biometrics-based security solutions for government and commercial communities. The company’s software engineer, Damien Crabtree says biometrics are becoming more attractive options for businesses as costs come down and the technology reaches full maturity.
The company says in addition to traditional customers from correctional facilities, it’s also seeing its BioMatch software and Sagem fingerprint scanners being deployed in small-to-medium sized businesses, large businesses and retail stores.
“As with all electronics, the manufacturing costs and components have come down in price, so it’s now at a reasonable level for most businesses to contemplate it as an alternative to the existing technologies,” Crabtree told Electronics News.
According to Acuity Market Intelligence, fingerprint technology, given its continuing maturation and cost-effectiveness, will continue to dominate the market through to 2017, although it will be challenged by iris and face recognition.
The relative size of the components and continued integration of technologies will also play a big part in the ubiquity of biometrics. While current fingerprint readers have been reduced to the size of a small chip, the next step is for touch screens to have integrated fingerprint capabilities. Camera and software enhancements could also see visual recognition technologies like iris and face integrated into common devices like mobile telephones.
Inherent insecurity, or incorrect application?
Biometrics differentiates itself from previous security solutions due to its ability to provide positive identification. Successfully leveraging the capabilities of this technology for applications in the consumer, commercial and government sectors will be key for an industry looking to retain its strong growth.
Covetek Australasia provides consumers with domestic fingerprint door locks, such as its BioDoor range. It is also introducing security systems based on facial recognition.
Marketing director Kevin Mackay claims while biometric technologies for consumers need to be practical, affordable and user-friendly, positive identification the central advantage offered by these systems. “Smart cards can be given to a friend to access. A password can be passed on. But biometrics is really recognising a person, through their fingerprint or face,” says Mackay.
But the general biometrics market is not without difficulty. Manufacturers face scepticism from customers regarding the security of their solutions, worries regarding the privacy of biometric data, and legislation stemming from these concerns.
Argus Global is an Australian company which specialises in software applications using biometric technologies to provide access control, time and attendance, visitor management and asset management. According to chief executive officer Bruce Lyman, the holy grail for the biometrics solution industry has always been the application of the technology to combat fraud.
However, erroneous perceptions regarding the privacy and security of biometrics have prevented manufacturers from breaking into that market.
“It’s really about the market not being well-informed about the technology, even though it is already quite mature,” Lyman explained.
The popular television series Mythbusters has not made things any easier. In episode 59 of season 4, hosts Jamie and Adam bypassed consumer-grade fingerprint readers and locks via various methods, including using a ballistics gel replica of a fingerprint.
In September 2010, the US-based National Research Council published a report titled Biometric Recognition: Challenges and Opportunities, arguing biometric systems are “inherently fallible”, calling for additional scientific research and threat assessments.
The problem, Lyman says, is not that fingerprint readers are inherently unreliable or easily fooled. After all, it’s seeing wide utilisation of the technology with its corporate, federal and state clients. “The challenge in the consumer sector is that right now it’s being addressed by technologies that don’t meet international standards,” Lyman explains.
In more critical applications like homeland security or immigration, he claims, the devices and systems are regulated by and compliant with security standards.
Lyman expects the consumer market to be challenged as governments develop legislations in response to the burgeoning use of biometrics. But despite the growing attention being paid to biometrics, Lyman sees the technology as a contributor in the overall application, rather than as a complete security system in itself.
“In this industry, what is not always understood by the users or the market is the fact that the technology is really irrelevant,” says Lyman, “Our biggest customers. . .are driven not by the technology but by the applications you can drive out of that the technology.”
For example, hospitals tend to buy systems which dispense drugs, but have a strong identifying element. Some of these clients might opt for iris biometrics to reduce the risk of contamination from contact.
Lyman says the integration of biometrics into applications and devices is further being driven by the US military, which provides its troops with biometric handheld devices that also embed GPS technologies, picture taking capabilities and wireless connectivity.
But such devices are not restricted to the military, with patents being filed in the United States for an access device intended for the US-VISIT system run by the Department of Homeland Security.
The device would gather fingerprint-based biometric identification and location data provided by a GPS, encrypt the information, and transmit it wirelessly to a server for verification. The technology provides verification of the identity of its holder, and informs the relevant government department if it’s currently inside or outside of the United States, allowing the tracking of entry or exit to and from the country.
While such devices can operate in a standalone mode independent of the presence of a constant connection to a network, Lyman says more information and algorithms are being stored on a single unit, making data protection even more critical. The intensely personal nature of biometric data exacerbates concerns over data security.
“With that sort of trend emerging, the issue is what have I got on the device?” Lyman asks, “What am I storing? If I lose one of these in Afghanistan, where is the data going to end up? How do I store the data, how do I protect it, and what is it connecting back to?”
Lyman says clients sufficiently concerned with data security may instead choose to buck the trend, and utilise “thin” biometric devices which only transmit and receive data to and from a secure network.
Any remaining problems with biometrics will no doubt be ironed out with time, as new technological developments emerge, and standards are developed for the technology However, the industry is more interested in the bigger picture, integrating biometrics into existing and new applications, not so much as a standalone one-size-fits-all security technology, but as enhanced solutions to existing and new challenges.
Identity or authentication?
These trends seem to indicate that biometrics is not the magic bullet for security. A 2006 article by Steve Riley, senior security strategist at Microsoft, posits that biometrics should only play an identifying role in an application, rather than displacing traditional methods of authentication. The piece, titled It’s Me, and Here’s My Proof: Why Identity and Authentication Must Remain Distinct, separates the concepts of identity and authentication.
Identity is a public assertion which in the pre-biometrics age was the equivalent of a user name. Authentication is the secret response, such as a PIN or password.
Riley argues biometrics should only provide the identity part of the equation, since people leave their biometric signatures everywhere. While biometric data is certainly harder to replicate than simply typing in a username, it’s not infallible. As Mythbusters found, fingerprints can be easily lifted from surfaces, while faces are readily stored by security systems and cameras.
According to Riley, biometrics will only be effective when combined with a second, authenticating factor, such as a PIN or a password. Unfortunately, such an approach limits the degree to which biometrics can simplify security.
Technologies are emerging, however, which blend protection and convenience by combining biometric identification data with context-specific data such as location, time, or platform to form a security certificate. Such systems would provide access and authorisation only if all data points line up.
Biometrics, while still conjuring futuristic expectations, is here today as a maturing technology, especially in fingerprint. While bringing to the table capabilities like positive identification, biometrics should be seen as an enhancement to security, rather than being a replacement of existing solutions.
As such, it performs best when integrated as part of a larger system, and serving an identification role in various applications. This trend is one which will continue as devices and systems are increasingly embedded with biometric components and functions.
While it is easy to be distracted by the workings of biometrics, systems-level considerations undertaken by the designers and the competence of users can make or break the underlying security technology.
Biometrics is centred around humans — the biological signatures of fingerprints, veins, irises, faces, and voices. And the effectiveness of any security implementation is ultimately dependent on the people designing and constructing the system. Humans are the key to a successful system in both senses of the word.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Isaac Leung
Quelle/Source: Electronics News, 11.10.2010
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