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NEWS/COMMENT

Biometric Technology Today February 2013

...Continued from page 3data, such as IVR events, caller location and ANI matching, also known as caller ID, are also examined to determine potential fraud.

HID Global and BehavioSec’s joint offering adds a layer of security to HID Global’s Fraud Detection System by employing behavioural ‘fingerprints’ as an additional authentication mechanism.

The integrated 4TRESS Authentication Server and Behaviometrics solution increases security at the time of login. If a user’s password or OTP token is stolen but the credentials are not entered the way the user would enter them, login would be impossible. Once logged in, user behaviour is continuously monitored to ensure that a third party has not intercepted or taken over the session.

BehavioSec’s Behaviometrics solutions can create digital fingerprints of users’ keyboard pressing patterns, including speed, frequency and pressure, when interacting with computer applications and websites.

“Recent security breaches have driven home the fact that the fewer layers of authentication your organisation employs, the more vulnerable you are to attacks and exploitation,” says Hilding Arrehed, director of worldwide professional services and technology partner programmes, Identity Assurance, with HID Global. “By com-bining BehavioSec’s groundbreaking technology with our 4TRESS Authentication Server, we can provide added value and security to our custom-ers by increasing the auditability and traceability of activity online, without making it more dif-ficult for the end user.”

Face and voice biometrics set for growth

TechNavio has forecast the global voice recognition market to grow

at a compound annual growth rate of 22.07% over the period 2012–2016. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increasing demand for voice biometrics, it says.

According to Technavio’s report ‘Global Voice Recognition Market 2012–2016’, the global voice recognition market has also been witness-ing increasing demand for speech recognition in mobile devices. However, the Technavio report comments that the inability to suppress ambient noise could pose a challenge to the growth of this market. Research company Global Industry Analysts (GIA) has projected the global market for face and voice biometrics to reach $2.9bn by 2018, fuelled by growing security concerns.

GIA believes voice biometrics is especially poised to succeed. “Having proven its worth in password reset application for years in enterprise IT help desk and customer care operations, voice recognition systems are evolving into a main-stream commercial user authentication technol-ogy, achieving significant adoption in a range of customer-facing applications,” reports GIA.

NIST proposes to add voice and oral data to biometric standard

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

has discussed proposed supplements to its biometric data format standard that would support voice recognition, dental and oral data, disaster victim identification and special data needs for mobile ID applications.

A proposed voice supplement to the ANSI/

NIST-ITL standard could assist law enforce-ment to identify a person of interest by match-ing a voice sample to voice data records, in a method similar to matching fingerprints.

In November 2011, NIST published a revised biometric data transfer standard that greatly expanded the type and amount of information forensic scientists can share across international networks to identify victims and support criminal investigations.

In January 2013 two working groups were to present proposed additions to the standard that include voice dental and oral biometrics.

The news of plans for a centralised biometric identity database in West Africa is the just the latest in a series of biometric developments in African countries.

The implementations that have already taken place have not been without their teething problems and some observers are beginning to question whether the technology is reliable and cost-effective enough for pan-country deployments

In Central Africa the State of Gabon is working with supplier Gemalto on a national biometric identification initiative while Kenya is to implement biometric identification systems.

And Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have adopted fingerprint technology to prevent electoral fraud. Ghana implemented biometric technology in its December 2012 general elections. The $45m project was piloted in several areas, successfully, but it did encounter social and technical difficulties. Some voters in Ghana’s elections had to cast their ballots again, according to local reports.

Snags have also been reported with Kenya’s nationwide biometric voter registration exercise targeting over 18m voters and in Nigeria the national identity card scheme has been hampered by different issues.

In Africa, as with the Indian Aadhaar national ID programme, the benefits of a national identity programme based on biometrics collected from a population with a high proportion of people who may be both illiterate and unbanked, look set to outweigh any teething issues associated with large-scale deployments.

In Europe, national biometric initiatives tend take the form of biometric passports, but as Steve Gold reports in this issue (‘The biometric passport imperative’, page 5) some experts are beginning to question the reliability and wisdom of adopting biometrically-enabled passports and the speed with which they have been adopted in the past few years.

In April 2012 the European Parliament estimated between 500,000 and a million of the 6.5m biometric passports issued to the end of March 2012 are false. Yet European authorities are pushing ahead with the programme and the European Commission has revealed it plans to take the Belgian government to court for failing to issue biometric passports with fingerprints

Despite the concerns, Africa and Europe would seem to share an unstoppable momentum towards national biometric systems in one shape or form, that will drive improvements and acceptance of biometric technology.

Tracey Caldwell

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Voice print sample: Credit NIST.