LSEC - Leaders in Security

The LSEC Biometrics Forum presents numerous use cases in Belgium and abroad on the current state of affairs of Biometrics

12-Mar-2008

Current business models behind the use of biometrics are going beyond the pure securing of assets. A number of use cases today show that the use of biometrics in many cases has significant advantages over other types of credentials such as passwords, smartcards or other tokens. The specificality of some technologies (such as 3D face recognition) could allow even faster access than wireless tokens. This faster time to access could increase productivity significantly (as was suggested in applications for companies with physical gates and a lot of personnel). Time and attendance measurement, allows for better control, but even more improved productivity and reduced costs (as was being suggested for construction companies). The use of biometrics is actually also becoming an additional service layer that is being offered in situations whereby security and control is very intrusive, such as airports. miSense in the UK allows for fast lane access to the Terminal 3 gates. Keeping the bad guys out is not the best business case in itself, but has been demonstrated as still being one of the most applicable solutions for border control. At the same time in combination with decentralized identity management, multi-modal (different types of biometrics), multi-faceted biometrics (different values from the same biometric) but also multi-layered security mechanisms (for instance smart cards in combination with face recognition) very large systems are being put in place. In those cases there is typically very few issues with failures to enroll. In the case where identities of people are not known, even with biometrics you could allow access to those who are not allowed.
Few years ago, the main message on biometrics were technology oriented, and discussions on the quality of false positives. Those discussions are fading away, luckily.
Technology and the industry are moving gradually into a mature market. Still some of the projects are on an proof of concept basis, or are very specific cases. However, more than one application could be appicable to any industry or enterprise, with typical biometrical benefits.
The market at large does require a lot of evangelization. Where Identity Management is moving away from the ICT management, Biometrics are moving away from the physical world and taken over by the same ICT management. Over time Biometrics also have to driven by the business and have to be able to show their real business benefits.

Ulrich Seldeslachts 12-Mar-2008