Archive for the 'Biometrics industry' Category

A recent survey publication by Unisys suggests that America overwhelmingly supports the use of biometric security for data protection.

More than 70 percent of respondents will trust banks and government agencies to ask them for biometric data for identity verification. Additionally, fingerprints nearly tied personal passwords as the primary preferred authentication method, 73 percent to 72 percent, respectively.

“Despite ongoing fears about identity theft and fraud, and a willingness by consumers to adopt biometric technology, many organizations have yet to embrace this technology as an effective way to protect data and identities,” said Mark Cohn, vice president of enterprise security at Unisys. “Risk management only gets more challenging with the current financial crisis. Sophisticated cybercriminals know how to take advantage of increasing consumer anxiety as well as perhaps weaker internal controls at banks as a result of layoffs and reorganizations. Adoption of advanced biometric technologies as a critical security measure is a possible solution, but it also must be augmented with best practices and stringent policies and procedures.”

Older and higher income groups significantly favor fingerprint scans, with 76 percent of people aged 35-49 and 50-64, and 79 percent of people earning $50,000 or more approving this verification method.

Men and women are willing to use biometrics to verify their identity at similar rates. However, women are less supportive of advanced methods such as eye scans (57 percent) and hand scans (39 percent) when compared with men, 66 percent and 47 percent, respectively.

These results are very encouraging for the future of biometrics in North America, and consequently across the world.

The global biometrics industry is set to triple in size by 2012, according to an article published today.

The growth will be supported by government identity management schemes, criminal and surveillance systems and private sector initiatives.

The worldwide market value could surpass $7 billion.

Fingerprint biometrics will spearhead growth, followed by facial and iris recognition technologies, with Asia and the Middle East marked down as the key growth areas.

Biometric technologies that will be displayed at Intersec trade fair and conference include areas such as fingerprint scan, face recognition, automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS), live-scan, iris recognition, middleware/biometric identity management software, vein recognition, multiple-biometric, hand geometry and voice recognition.