The biometric security market is maturing fast and there are many new opportunities for companies providing biometric security solutions.
That's the message from John Kendall, Asia-Pacific director of national security development for Unisys, who's attended this week's Global Security Asia 2011 conference in Singapore.
Kendall told ZDNet Asia that there's been "a huge change from just two or three years ago", with far more interest from governments and private companies in using biometric security solutions to enhance security.
And the rate of technology development is opening up new opportunities, although Kendall said there is still a lot of "catch up" work to be done by countries to ensure legislation remains relevant to account for the new technologies.
Kendall pointed to the iris recognition systems now being used by countries like India and Mexico as examples of new markets embracing biometric technology. These systems have also been used for access control purposes by organizations like the Bank of America, with one system even being used in residential homes for the elderly in South Korea and Japan.
Kendall told ZDNet Asia that these systems are now advancing to the point where they capture the entire face as well as the iris - thereby getting around the problem of people holding up a picture of a person's eyes to gain access. Kendall said a possible next phase for iris recognition systems could be in adding another layer of security for people using smartphones, PCs and laptops, to help prevent scamming.
Kendall also told ZDNet Asia that much development is currently taking place in biometric fingerprint technology. Fingerprint readers are now maturing to become "sub-dermal" devices, whereby they're so sophisticated that they're able to read the pattern of blood vessels or tissue beneath the skin as the mode of identification.
"Some of the new readers use multiple wavelengths of lights to go into different depths of the human skin, others use radio frequency to excite it so even if your finger is very dirty or fingerprint ‘worn', it still works very well," Kendall explained.
Kendall believes that although there's still wariness about biometric technology on privacy grounds, there is "a very large acceptance" because of the convenience the systems provide. He added that the reducing cost of biometric technology means more organizations will be convinced about using it.
Further resources:
Biometric Consulting
IT Biometric Security Solutions
Iris Recognition Systems
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