More than 400,000 USAA customers, five of whom are over 90 years old, have opted in to use biometrics (face, voice or touch) to authenticate themselves to the company's mobile banking application.The median age for customers opting for biometrics is 3.5
Tractica’s approach is to focus on use cases, which Lockhart says “define the biometrics market opportunity.” The company has classified 142 use cases, and offers a profile specific to each with respect to “business function, industry, and modality.” And the advisory service consider a wide range of biometric modalities, from the widespread (fingerprint scanning, facial recognition) to the more obscure (electrocardiogram and DNA recognition).Technology isn't an application, so the focus on use cases is appropriate.
Besides traditional application for a secure entry or time clock system, facial recognition technology can be used in other fields such as remote identification.There's more good information at the link.
The market for facial recognition technology is ultimately decided by the population. China has an immense population, which makes it a potentially huge market, according to the report from Bosi Data Research Center.
"But customers should know that multimodal biometric identification is much safer than single biometric identification, especially when the technology is used in finance," Lü said. "We can't ensure the facial recognition technology can be 100 percent accurate, and it's safer if you can use other biometric identification together."
The Fujitsu prototype incorporated a high-speed, high-accuracy iris recognition algorithm developed by California-based Delta ID. Fujitsu said the error rate for the prototype is about one in 100,000.I somehow missed the first mention of this collaboration in early March.
Available in green, black and white, the Arrows NX F-04G is slated to be released at the end of this month in Japan for around ¥55,000 (US$460). There are no plans to sell it outside Japan.
Visa is ramping up its efforts to get into the digital payments game with an expansion of its digital wallet service and more intensive investigations into biometric security.
Tractica’s forecasts indicate that key industries in the biometrics market over the next decade are likely to be finance, consumer devices, healthcare, and government, followed by enterprise applications, defense, education, law enforcement, and non-government organizations. Key use cases that are likely to drive biometrics revenue over the next decade include consumer device authentication, mobile banking, automated teller machines (cashpoints), government IT systems, point-of-sale transactions, pharmacy dispensing, and wearable device authentication.
Authorities in Florida say a ruse to get a man's fingerprints led to his arrest as a convicted killer who escaped an Ohio prison farm and disappeared for most of six decades.
Brevard County deputies say investigators with the U.S. Marshals Service in Ohio sought help to check out the man while chasing leads about Frank Freshwaters, an Akron man who escaped in 1959. Major Tod Goodyear says they created a ruse to get the man to sign papers, then matched the fingerprints to those from the decades-old arrest.
The lack of identity documents for IDPs in the Eastern DRC poses a challenge in targeting humanitarian assistance. Almost 80 per cent of adults living in sites having no form of identity documents. In response IOM launched a biometric registration pilot project in eight displacement sites around the city of Goma in June 2014.Biometrics are an inexpensive, fast and accurate way of setting up ad hoc ID systems from scratch. Those interested in development and disaster recovery, take note.
Between June 2014 and April 2015 IOM took the fingerprints of nearly 16000 IDPs. In the context of food distributions the collected information is used to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches the most vulnerable and avoids duplication and fraud.
Terrorism prosecutors in Brooklyn want to use sophisticated voice recognition evidence — the same technology used to identify ISIS butcher “Jihad John” — for the first time in a federal trial in the U.S., the Daily News has learned.The novel part of this that prosecutors wish to use the technology in a Federal trial.
...[K]ey [smartcard] benefits, including the ability to electronically exchange beneficiary medical information and electronically convey beneficiary identity and insurance information to providers, would do little or nothing to deter fraud, experts said.Note: GAO = Government Accountability Office
Adding certain layers of protection to smart cards like biometric biometric information or a picture ID could help to deter fraud, the GAO said.
Tracking the arrival and departure of foreign visitors to the United States is an essential part of immigration control, law enforcement and national security. The need for arrival controls is obvious, but recording departures is also important; without it, there is no way to know definitively whether travelers have left when they were supposed to. Biometric entry/exit and transfer solutions are proven in their feasibility, low cost, added security value, increased efficiencies, travel convenience, and accuracy. Good products are available off the shelf. They are flexible and built, and can be customized, for many environments. The biometric, secure document and identity management industry is well-versed in integration with back-end data systems while building in flexibility for the future. Biometric solutions such as facial recognition, fingerprints and iris scans assure identity when coupled with biographic information found in travel documents. Using only biographic information, however, such as names or passport numbers, provides no assurance that the person departing is the one whose original arrival was recorded.The quote above is taken from the pdf linked to the article at top. The 29-page document is an excellent resource for those interested in the topic.
The report points out that India’s government has begun to implement reforms to unlock the country’s investment potential - to improve the business environment; liberalize FDI; boost both public and private investment in infrastructure; quickly resolve corporate disputes; simplify taxation, and lower corporate taxes. States are set to receive more resources and spending power, and the government has reiterated its resolve to implement the GST by April, 2016, a move that is widely expected to meaningfully increase India’s tax to GDP ratio. New models of delivering benefits through direct transfers to bank accounts, together with the biometric identification of beneficiaries, are expected to reduce leakages.
The Aadhaar card has emerged as probably the world's largest biometric identification programmes in the world with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) issuing nearly 82 crore cards.1 crore = 10,000,000
At the end of the day, biometric data is really just another type of personal data that banks hold, access and use with the trust of customers and employees. But obtaining consent should not just be seen as merely a bureaucratic necessity. It is part of a process by which banks can maintain and enhance trust — which only becomes more important in the age of big data and virtual relationships.
The pair told Thomas Fox-Brewster from Forbes that the flaw lies in older versions of the Android operating system, up to and including Android 4.4.The semi-technical press seizes upon biometrics as a proxy for personal data. This is old news, but here's a great example.
Subsequently, anyone running Android 5.0 or above are not at risk and the security experts are advising people on older models to update as soon as possible.
He says external body methods like fingerprints are “antiquated”, and that internal body functions like heartbeat and vein recognition using embedded and ingestible devices are the future, to allow “natural body identification”. LeBlanc says internal devices could include brain implants, and that ingestible devices could be powered by stomach acid that runs batteries.Time will tell, I guess, but user acceptance has been has been a big issue for identity management solutions using biometrics. A bank asking customers to put something in their body in order to access their money would seem to be of another character entirely.
That's right: Social Security numbers were not intended for identification. They were made to track how much money people made to figure out benefit levels. That's it. Before 1972, the cards issued by the Social Security Administration even said, "For Social Security purposes. Not for Identification." The numbers only started being used for identification in the 1960s when the first big computers made that doable. They were first used to identify federal employees in 1961, and then a year later the IRS adopted the method. Banks and other institutions followed suit. And the rest is history.Author: Adam Levin, Former Director New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs; Chairman of Credit.com and Identity Theft 911.
This position — that the adversary knows your system as well as you do, if not better, as soon as it is stood up — while extreme, led to the creation of large number factorization, the basis for all modern encryption, from PGP to RSA tokens. Under these encryption schemes, as long as the key is kept private, someone can know everything about how the security system works and still not be able to crack it.Coincidentally, our CTO and I were having a conversation along these lines just yesterday. It's a thrill a minute at SecurLinx!
To get to a place of true cybersecurity, another stark innovation in thinking is needed. What is needed is an Inverse Shannon's Maxim: the user knows nothing.
All citizens will have to gradually move to biometric identification, Interior Minister Gilad Erdan said Monday, submitting a report on the system’s pilot run to the cabinet and Knesset.Obviously, his stance isn't universally popular, but read the whole thing. There are a lot of good bits of information there including this one: Israel is the OECD country with the most counterfeited passports.
“Smart biometric documentation that cannot be counterfeited, together with use of the biometric data will allow a full security and defense package for Israeli citizens’ identities and will balance our responsibility to ensure their security with our requirement to defend their privacy,” Erdan stated.
Aadhaar's comprehensive database that comprises iris (retina scan) and biometric (fingerprint) information is hoped to aid enforcement agencies find missing children, curb human trafficking and check illegal adoptions. Aadhaar enrolments have begun in Karnataka for children in child care institutes run by the state government's Department of Women and Child Development. Nearly 4,000 kids and youngsters are in care of state homes and will get identity cards.A couple of notes:
Though one tech financier calls Jay Edelson “a leech tarted up as a freedom fighter,” the Chicago class-action lawyer has had an impact on the privacy issues that the Internet has made so pervasive.
Already hosting soe 40,000 enrolees, the BIKES system facilitates self- immigration clearance at designated lanes. Designed for speed and accuracy, the process takes under 16 seconds.Singapore has been one of the more enthusiastic adopters of border biometrics.
In a synopsis, the company credited its strong performance – which saw its net worth increasing by ten percent, reaching $27 billion – at least in part to “innovations such as secure facial and voice recognition on mobile devices”.Tying in to the post below, the article mentions that the USAA customers who use it really love Apple Pay.
Here, Richard Walters, GM and VM at Intermedia, expands on Whaley’s criticism, claiming that the biometric technology offered by Apple is not secure enough to support sensitive activities like mobile banking.Very much worth reading in its entirety.
A Florida businessman accused of falsifying his death overseas was located and then arrested by federal authorities after facial recognition software returned a match to his face in passport records. Jose Salvador Lantigua now faces one federal count of providing a false statement on a passport application.Though never easy, it's getting harder to fake your own death.
According to the Illinois Biometrics Information Privacy Act, it is unlawful to acquire biometric data without first providing the subject with a written disclaimer that details the purpose and length of the data collection, and without the subject’s written consent.Read the whole thing.
New Zealand moved to five-year passports in 2005 in response to security concerns sparked by the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US...
In addition, developments in biometric technology have allayed concerns about passport fraud and counterfeiting.
The MPs noted a “worrying” lack of government oversight and regulation of the use of biometrics by public bodies.ILLINOIS: Does Facebook's facial recognition technology violate privacy laws? (ABA Journal)
It called for day-to-day independent oversight of the police use of all biometrics, and for the Biometrics Commissioner’s jurisdiction to be extended beyond DNA and fingerprints.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, argues that the social media company was required by Illinois law to inform Carlo Licata in writing that it would collect and retain his “biometric data,” and specify when it would destroy that data.
Facial-recognition software reportedly helped collar a 16-year-old boy in Monday's violent Philadelphia subway attack that left a 60-year-old man knocked out cold and suffering a broken jaw.
The different municipalities of Denmark issued flawed passports without fingerprints, stated by the Customs authority. Earlier the Customs authorities discovered the mistake and informed the affect municipalities. Passports issued from 44 municipalities after the date of February 2nd are missing biometric fingerprints due to an error made by...I wonder how the oversight was discovered.
There's no guarantee Apple will implement the technology - the Cupertino company obtains numerous patents that it never uses. These can be precautionary, or intended to trip up or block competitors. But as the industry increasingly looks to kill traditional passwords, selfie-secured iPhones sounds surprisingly plausible.
SRI International’s Iris on the Move (IOM) technology is about to see a number of integrations into mobile products. The company’s iris-scanning technology has been licensed to Samsung and will initially appear in the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 tablet before finding other integrations.
With today’s mobile access technologies, smart devices can be used as universal credentials for accessing multiple buildings, IT systems and other applications using NFC and bluetooth. These devices provide users with extremely convenient vehicles for opening doors and performing other tasks that require the presentation of a secure credential.There's a lot of good information in the linked article and it's written by the director of Strategic Business Development and Innovation at HID, and you'd expect that they've been putting a lot of thought toward what access control is going to look like after prox cards.
The spokesperson, who admitted this was not the only flaw identified in the new electoral process deployed during the election, said the Commission had taken note of the challenges and would effect corrections in subsequent elections to ensure that the exercise was more credible and acceptable.While the article deals with the technical challenges of the biometric technology, and the mixed response to those, Nigeria confronts other challenges that make proper elections difficult regardless of the technology used for casting votes.
To counter the growing menace of terrorism, the Pakistan government has ordered all mobile service companies to acquire fingerprint scans of their subscribers before April 15. Subscribers failing to do so will get their mobile subscription terminated.
Biometrics for mobile devices have finally reached a tipping point. The march began with the release of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and later the iPad, each subsequently matched by Android competitors. These smartphones and tablets finally have enough processing power and hardware capabilities to put biometrics directly into their users' hands. Biometrics, whether for mobile devices or large stationary systems, typically perform one of two functions: authentication, proving that someone is who they claim to be, or identification, figuring out who someone is. Nearly all consumer-facing use cases are authentication and nearly all identification uses are enterprise-facing, especially government use cases. Somewhere in the middle, financial institutions are offering their users the chance to authenticate to online banking systems with their voices or with their eyes, in place of keying a personal identification number (PIN).
Although we can’t say fir certain that the P8 will play host to a fingerprint scanner, the large rectangular cut-out on the phone’s rear looks markedly similar to the fingerprint reader on the oversized Huawei Ascend Mate 7.Huawei's customer-facing products have really come on strong in the last few years.
The good news for us password jugglers is that there is now a greater imperative behind building higher levels of security into systems from the outset, rather than trying to add it on afterwards, and that new and better ways of doing this are being expored....'Tis a consummation
At first we’ll see systems like Google’s FaceNet and Facebook’s aforementioned system (dubbed “DeepFace”) make their way onto those company’s web platforms. They will make it easier, or more automatic, for users to tag photos and search for people, because the algorithms will know who’s in a picture even when they’re not labeled. These types of systems will also make it easier for web companies to analyze their users’ social networks and to assess global trends and celebrity popularity based on who’s appearing in pictures.
Venture capitalists poured a record $2.3 billion into cybersecurity companies in 2014, a year marked by frequent reports of hacks on high-profile companies. Yearly investment in cybersecurity startups been on the rise for several years now, and is up 156 percent since 2011, according to CB Insights. The trend will likely continue, as 75 percent of CIOs surveyed by Piper Jaffray said they would increase spending on security in 2015.
Bridge Day 2015 vendors, BASE jumpers and rappellers may be able to choose this year to either pay for a background check with a contracted security company or submit to a biometric fingerprint scan for free.This one is especially of local interest here in West Virginia. Not mentioned in the article is that this year’s Bridge Day Festival takes place on Saturday, October 17, 2015.
The Bridge Day Commission in Fayette County passed a motion Wednesday that adds the option of the background check. The check would be conducted by a contracted, third party security company, said Bridge Commission Chairwoman Sharon Cruikshanks.
The cost of the background check will be $12 to $35, depending on which of the three companies the commission contracts.
"Biometric scans are a free option," Cruikshanks said.
“The facial recognition software provides the [CBP Officers] with a match confidence score after the e-passport chip is scanned and the photo is taken. The score is generated by algorithms designed to detect possible imposters.”A one-to-one search comparing the passport photo to the person standing at the customs kiosk is about as simple as a facial recognition deployment gets.
Microsoft will be taking a two pronged approach to authentication. The first is the actual authentication. Windows Hello will work with several biometrics, including fingerprint scanners, facial recognition, and iris scanning, as examples. This will be used in conjunction with hardware cryptography on the device to unlock the device. Microsoft is claiming false unlocks at around one in one hundred thousand. Fingerprints are well known, but the facial recognition will not rely on just a webcam, but rather will require new hardware such as the Intel RealSense 3D Cameras to ensure that it is a real person in front of the device and not just a photo. The unlock is tied to the actual device, and none of the unlock information is ever sent off of the device. Existing fingerprint readers can be used with Windows Hello.
The announcement came by way of Jack Ma, the CEO of Alipay’s parent company Alibaba, who provided a few details in a speech at the Cebit trade fair in Germany.
Ma explained the development as a solution to the difficulties associated with online paymetns, which he called “a big headache,” adding, “You forget your password, you worry about your security.” He went on to say that in its facial recognition system, Alipay will offer users “a new technology.”
"You log into your Yahoo account using your normal passwords. In the security settings, you turn on on-demand passwords and register your phone. Next time you try to login, the password field is replaced by a button that says 'send my password,' and the company texts a four-character password to your phone."There are, however, critics of this approach. See Yahoo’s attempt to kill off passwords raises security concerns at Computer Weekly.
The United Arab Emirates is set to become one of the most technically advanced countries when it comes to border control. The Emirates will deploy a series of biometric e-gates at all entry points while also working to gather more biometric data to add to the fingerprints currently tracked in its biometric database.The UAE is already one of the most eager adopters of border biometrics. That doesn't look to be changing any time soon.
Join Frost & Sullivan's upcoming complimentary webinar, "The Future of Biometrics," to understand the potential of the market and its impact on current businesses. Industry leaders should attend this webinar to learn how biometrics will boost convergence and growth in other markets.Looks interesting.
Key FindingsThat Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) is probably one of the lowest I've ever seen in the biometrics sector. It, however, doesn't come as much as a surprise. The number of government customers is pretty much capped at around 200. Governments were some of the earliest adopters of biometric solutions, so most of the 200 potential customers are already in the market. Prices paid by these customers, generally, should be falling or stable. So, there are a whole host of reasons for this low estimate for growth in the government biometrics sector.
◾The global biometric systems market is estimated to value US$4.4 billion in 2015 and increase at a CAGR of 8.70% during the forecast period, to reach a peak of US$10.2 billion by 2025.
◾The market is expected to be dominated by North America, followed by Asia-Pacific and Europe.
◾Fingerprint recognition is expected to account for the largest share of expenditure in the global Government Biometric Systems market going forward, followed by facial recognition and Iris.
I want to go.Tourism in Oman, Skift’s Pick for top destination of 2015, is booming, with an investment program by the Sultanate of Oman’s slated to attract 12 million visitors by 2020. Passenger traffic at Muscat International Airport has grown 329% since 2007, reaching 9 million passengers since 2014.The comprehensive program consists of a “layered approach to border control,” giving the Royal Oman Police an efficient and flexible visa processing and security clearance process, including the issuance of eVisas.
With hackers seemingly running rampant online and millions of users compromised, efforts for stronger online identity protection - mainly using biometrics - are gaining momentum...It's true. The recent hacks have focused attention on biometrics. The spotlight, however, has fallen on consumer-level biometric applications. That's fine by us, but the recent high profile hacks haven't been perpetrated by hackers using customer credentials to gain access to systems. That kind of hack is hugely inconvenient for individual users, but it doesn't make the news.
From an organizational point of view, for many many service providers, allowing customers and users to protect their individual accounts with passwords, exposes the organization as a whole to minimal risk. Some relatively predictable number of users who use passwords will choose poor passwords, some will become victims of phishing scams. If the costs of sorting these cases out are less than the costs associated with burdening all users with more onerous security protocols, then the password is the appropriate solution. But at some point, all databases of user/customer information should be protected with biometric access control methods because, while having occasional users pick weak passwords or get tricked into giving them away is one thing, hackers making off with the entire database of user/password information is something else altogether. Requiring biometric verification of all human database Administrator logins would go a long way to lowering the biggest risk of passwords: their wholesale theft. In many ways the Admin level is the perfect point to introduce these more rigorous security protocols. There aren't (or shouldn't be) too many Admins, so the inconvenience falls on as few individuals as possible. Admins are tech savvy, so they should be able to adapt to the new security environment quickly. They should have an understanding of why the extra step is worth the effort. It's their responsibility to keep the keys of the kingdom. Perhaps most compelling, they're the ones on the hot seat when the CEO is out apologizing to all and sundry following a data breach.Granted, after a hack, having biometrics there to protect individual accounts should change the retail fraudster's Return on Investment (ROI) calculations. With biometrics it should be harder for him to turn the user information into money. Still the Benjamin Franklin axiom that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” would seem to carry the day here.
The developer plans to include robotic parking, facial recognition software in the elevators, biometric safes and a 75-inch in-wall television for every unit.
The High Commission of India states on its website that, after outsourcing the process to a company called VFS, all applicants will need to be physically present at India Visa and Consular Services centres to submit an application and biometric data.All security applications must strike a balance between the effectiveness of the security measures and the needs of the entity seeking enhanced security. As anyone who has ever seen a waste basket propping open an office door could tell you, better security usually requires sacrifices to efficiency. More security with more convenience is a tall order.
It says: “Biometric data collection, including fingerprint data and facial imagery will be a mandatory requirement for all visa applicants soon. As a result, all visa applicants will need to first apply online and, thereafter, be physically present (mandatorily) at India Visa and Consular Services centres, by appointment, for submission of visa application and biometric data enrolment.”
Kenya: Biometric technology eases banking in rural areas (KBC) — Kenyans in rural areas can now open and get access to their bank accounts with ease following the roll out of a biometric technology...
Somalia's remittance crisis has been intensifying for years. Britain's Barclays Bank closed its accounts with Dahabshiil, the largest Somali money transfer company, in 2014.The "last mile" problem is usually reserved for describing the challenges of connecting retail customers with physical infrastructures such as plumbing, electricity or wired communications.
In Australia, Westpac, the only bank partnering with Somali remittance companies, is due to close their accounts at the end of March, the report said.
"We are just lurching from crisis to crisis", said Ed Pomfret, Oxfam's Somalia campaign manager. "These governments need to take action."
Britain has been working with the World Bank on a "Safer Corridor" initiative to tighten the scrutiny of Somali money transfers through measures such as biometric identity cards for recipients in Somalia.
RBS and NatWest have been the first banks to announce that they are soon to allow customers to access accounts on their smartphones using fingerprint recognition technology.Also:
The move is a seminal one for UK financial institutions, and an indication that the era of passwords may be finally drawing to a close.
Both the Royal Bank of Scotland and MasterCard have recently made announcements regarding fingerprint authentication services and, if research from Visa Europe is anything to go by, the technology could be the best way to help users keep their bank details secure.
The research revealed those aged between 16 and 24-years-old are very liberal with personal details.
For example, 34% of this age group have shared their debit or credit card pin numbers with someone, compared with 23% for all age groups. Some 32% have shared their smartphone password and 20% have shared internet banking passwords.
Apple’s biometric payment system is set to be used by the US Federal Government for payment cards and social security and veteran’s payments, following an announcement by US President Barack Obama.
Soon, you may be able to log in to Outlook with a fingerprint or an eyescan. At the Stanford Cybersecurity Summit on Friday, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would support the next version of the Fast Identification Online (FIDO) spec, allowing devices to work with a wealth of third-party biometric readers and providing an easy framework for any hardware makers that want to build extra security into a laptop or phone.
Cormac Herley is in the 95 percent who don't. He's principal researcher with Microsoft Research, an arm of the software giant.I also love Harley's repurposing of the democracy quote often attributed to Winston Churchill.
"Passwords are the worst system in the world, except for all the other systems," he says.
Herley recommends assigning different tiers to passwords. Using your best, most complex ones for work and banking, but devoting less effort to those that don't matter as much. But even that can be a lot to ask, even for him.
"I write the passwords down and have a photocopy at home and a photocopy in the office and a couple copies here and there."
But, could all that be compromising security?
"Well, I mean, um, yes," he says.
This report examines how biometric technology is applied to the health care industry, mainly in the United States. This report notes that “health care biometrics” is utilized for access control, identification, workforce management or patient record storage. Biometrics in health care often takes two forms: providing access control to resources and patient identification solutions. The growing demand for biometrics solutions is mainly driven by the need to combat fraud, along with the imperative to improve patient privacy along with health care safety. Biometrics are also increasing being used for medical monitoring and mobile health care.
For the last two years, the health industry suffered the highest number of hackings of any sector. Last year, it accounted for 43% of all data breaches, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. To help prevent these costly issues, medical companies have begun adopting an array of biometrics security systems that use data from a patient’s fingerprint, iris, veins, or face.There really isn't an identity management challenge that health care doesn't have.
A government official said as a person can only enrol for Aadhaar once, there needed to be a mechanism to retrace the number in case the person has misplaced all possible links to it.
“Enrolling again is not an option, as the system automatically rejects biometric details that have been registered once,” said the official.
Under the new method, a person can put in the biometrics and the system will keep prompting for more demographic details till the back-end server zeros down to 10 possible matches.
During the entire process, none of the details of the Aadhaar holders will be shown to the person or the operator till the time an exact match has been found.
This has been done keeping in mind the design of the Aadhaar project, where the system doesn’t reveal any information about the resident and only tries to authenticate the identity replying with a yes or no.
Over 979,002 clients of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in the Eastern Region had been issued with the new biometric cards.
[...M]any topics surrounding smart guns were approached and many questions were fielded, but finding conclusions or consensus began to feel like a photographer’s pursuit of the sunset. Smart guns are a topic so mired in political dispute, technological uncertainty, arcane legal policy, and institutional avoidance and denial that each pursuit of an answer simply presented a sound of hemming and hawing that was accompanied by a new set of questions.The challenge of smart guns is interesting on many levels.
A biometric 'Iris identification system' for distribution of pension will be soon launched in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh.This is perhaps the first time I've seen one biometric modality displace another one in an existing ID management application.
At present, the pensions are being paid by taking a thumb impression of the pensioners, Krishna District Collector A Babu said in an official release. However, sometimes the illegible thumb impressions create problems, he said.
While much recent retail technology buzz has focused on the promise and peril of Apple's iBeacons, another identity tech has matured: facial recognition. It's now powerful enough to let stores use cameras to link customers' faces to information stored in databases—but it's also finding use in industrial and transportation settings, where it can be used to keep people away from sensitive areas. But are we ready for this tech to start linking personal data with our faces without our knowledge?The piece is worth reading in its entirety.
Legally, there's nothing stopping American businesses from doing so. A recent BBC article posited the future concern that retail businesses could compare photos taken in-store with databases drawing from data found on the Internet—like databases of social media or Facebook users...
Senate Minority Whip William Payne introduced a proposal this week that calls for the state's top elections officials to study the feasibility of bringing biometrics into the mix. That could mean anything from retinal scans to the thumbprint-imaging technology used to access smartphones.I don't like to see so much made of retina biometrics but because this is big enough news, I'm linking it anyway.
After hearing the same debate year after year, the Albuquerque Republican said he wanted to find a way to take some of the "venom" out of the argument that requiring photo identification would lead to voter suppression.
Former Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has confessed that the dimple at the back of the Nexus 6 was originally intended to play host to a fingerprint sensor. Back in 2011, Motorola was a pioneer in bringing fingerprint recognition to its Atrix 4G smartphone, however the company it used then, Authentec, was purchased by Apple a year later for a price of $356 million. Authentec were, in Woodside's judgment, the best supplier around and "the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren’t there yet."
Samsung's next flagship smartphone will ship with a Touch ID-like fingerprint sensor in place of the swipe-style sensor that the company employed on the underwhelming Galaxy S5, according to a new report.Good move. The "swipe readers" can be a bit trickier to use.
The Windows 10 technical preview released last fall was aimed squarely at enterprise customers, bringing back the Start menu and allowing sandboxed Windows Store apps to run in windows instead of full screen. This week's update should be much more focused on consumer devices and services.There is a brief biometric mention, but it's mostly big-picture analysis of Microsoft's consumer offerings.
Here's what I'll be looking for in Redmond on Wednesday...
“This will make USAA the first U.S. financial institution to offer facial and voice recognition on a mobile app as added protection against fraud and identity theft,” the company announced.
So how does it work? USAA’s facial recognition requires users to look at the screen and, when prompted, blink their eyes. For voice recognition, users must read a short phrase.
The right edge of the phone sports all hardware buttons(volume rocker, power and camera shutter) and a fingerprint sensor as well as a 60GHz mobile beaming transmitter.The fingerprint reader appears to be one of the models where the user slides their finger across the sensor. The linked piece has a lot of photos and a review.
The global market for Biometrics is slated to post a strong CAGR of 19.6% between 2014 and 2020 to reach a projected US$30.1 billion by 2020 from an estimated US$10.3 billion in 2014. Fingerprint recognition is estimated the largest technology with market worth US$3.2 billion in 2014 while Civil ID is slated to be the largest application with global market of US$4.6 billion in the same year.
Cybercriminals armed with usernames and passwords broke into customer accounts at American and United airlines, with some going so far as to book free flights and seat upgrades.
Brazil certainly is an interesting case.Brazil has embraced the digital age with more gusto than most. It is one of the top users of social media and recently signed-off on a bill of rights for the Internet, the Marco Civil. The country is also a leader in the development of online banking with more than 43 percent of web users engaging such services, and can be proud of a thriving software industry, including some world class companies.
A slew of initiatives, including financial support to Aadhaar-based companies, were announced at country's first hackathon, dedicated to innovating on the Aadhaar platform. The 24-hour marathon coding competition, conducted by incubator Khosla Labs and Nasscom, also announced an appstore dedicated to such applications, to be launched by the end of this month.Cool!
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill released on 9 January allocates US$3 million in funding for testing of a biometric exit app that would be used by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The funding will be used for a biometric exit mobile application demonstration at two airports, according to an explanatory note added to the bill.
The idea of implementing an exit system at all US ports of entry was first touted in 1996 as part of the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act”.
This software performs a 3D scan of the original mechanical parts or faces to obtain a virtual model of the real dimensions of objects or parts that are no longer manufactured so they can be reproduced, said Jorge Luis Nuñez Flores, professor at the Department of Electronics of the University Center for Science in Engineering (CUCEI) of UDG.Very clever, really. But unlike biometric templates, this technology is specifically made to help "reverse engineer" the original 3D object. So, in a way, this is a lot more like a data compression tool, than a biometric template generator.
"The reconstruction technique involves the projection and acquisition of binary patterns (stripes of clear and dark lights, deployed vertically and horizontally) using a commercial projector and a digital camera," says Nuñez Flores.
When setting up the device, you take a number of pictures of the people you trust around your space to “teach” it what you look like, and the device will snap a photo every time it sees a face and send you a notification on your phone as people are seen. If a stranger pops up, you get a notification that “an unknown face has been seen" for your review. “It’s not a surveillance camera, but it is a security camera,” a Netatmo representative told us.Peoples' surrounding are going to become much more responsive to the individuals within them. This piece of technology is a very small step in that direction.
Argentina’s social security agency has announced that all pensioners will need to undergo biometric registration to receive payments, and that all ATM payment services for benefits must also have fingerprint readers installed by June.¿Cómo se dice, "Ghostbusters?"
Increasing investments, surging government security spending, rising number of tourists, government projects, upcoming UAE’s World Expo 2020 and increasing IT spending are fueling the demand for biometrics systems in Middle-East market. In global biometrics market, share of Middle-East region is expected to surge due to countries such as UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel.
