Biometric security about to enter the mainstream

Technical advances and increased security concerns are pushing the technology into the mainstream. Finger-printing has been used by police for more than a hundred years, but electronic scanning now means that that an individual’s fingerprint can be identified in a matter of seconds, out of a database of millions. Alastair MacWillson, global managing director of Accenture Security Practice, writes in the Times that technological advances mean that other biometric information, such as iris or facial scans, can now be captured quickly and unobtrusively. “When it comes to biometrics and the general public, it is not enough to offer a service that provides an intangible benefit, even one as important as increased security, if it also makes life difficult for customers,” MacWillson writes. “For biometric security to be successful its failure rate must be close to zero and it must offer more than the technologies which are currently being used.”

This why biometrics technology has been around for a while, it is only now coming to the fore. “Offering a passport for scanning at an airport or using a pin codes for credit cards empowers the consumer while using an almost fool-proof technology.” MacWillson says that recent trials at Heathrow’s Terminal 3, which involved Accenture as part of the miSense consortium, demonstrated that biometric technology is now sophisticated enough to be integrated into everyday activities. These trials gave travellers the option of putting biometric details on to a biometric smartcard that would allow them to use fast track immigration desks, bypassing the often lengthy queues. The result: 70 percent of people in the trial commented on the benefit of faster travel times.

The first two industries likely to be agrresively adopting biometrics woud be travel and banking, but the technology would also find itself being used more at border controls and crossings, in voice recognition could which would be used by call centres, and in electronic ID cards for provision of goods, services, benefits, or bank transactions. There are still a number of issues surrounding the future of biometric technology, including fears about invasion of privacy and a Big Brother state, writes MacWillson. “While these questions will need to be discussed and each business… the technology itself has enormous potential to help both companies and individuals.”