scrapbook

Iris ID

Biometrics Use Voice-Printing, Retinal Scanning and Fingerprinting to Make Transactions Secure

Sept. 13, 2004 -- For Paul Kapioski, owner of a Thriftway gourmet grocery store franchise in Seattle, paying for groceries has gotten a lot easier ? and a lot more secure.

Now, instead of using his credit or debit card to pay for his food, he uses the index finger of his right hand, which he places in a fingerprint reader at the register. After punching in his access code, the register asks him from which account he would like to pay - checking, credit card or debit card. Without pulling out his wallet, he indicates his choice. The amount is properly debited and he gets a receipt.

If this sounds like a scenario from the future, think again. It's one of the many ways a new technology called "biometrics" is reshaping the way consumers will do everything from paying for groceries to securing their financial transactions at the bank or online.

"I don't have to reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet and find the card I want to use," Kapioski says, adding some 4,000 of his customers have also opted to pay for their groceries the same way since 2001. "I don't even need to have my wallet and the whole process takes about two minutes."

Biometrics is the term for the technology used to capture and encode any human characteristic in order to identify people during financial or other transactions, or when people wish to access secure places.

Readings can be taken from fingerprints, the eye's iris, the sound of the voice or the shape of the face and hands. In the future, DNA may even be used, experts said. In the next few years, such technology may be used at bank ATMs instead of cards, or in lieu of a password and I.D. for online banking.

"The place that consumers will likely see biometrics in next couple of years from financial services is at the ATMs and branches," said Ryan Kalember, a senior security consultant for VeriSign Inc., an E-commerce security and communications company based in Mountain View, Calif.

Kalember added customers "would have to do so voluntarily," because biometrics is still a significant privacy issue, requiring people to submit to some sort of examination to record their biometric information in the first place.

While still in its infancy, biometrics is a growing market. Companies across all industry sectors are expected to spend about $800 million on biometric technology in 2004, according to research firm Celent Communications, based in Boston. That number is expected to leap to $4.3 billion by 2006.

"The use of biometrics by financial institutions has continued to increase," said Christine Barry, a Celent analyst. "But more than half of the biometric revenues are being generated by the government for use at airports and borders."

Here are the main ways biometric technology is being used today, primarily in pilots, internally at corporations or within various branches of the federal government.

• Fingerprint scanning: As crime investigators already know, each person has unique fingerprints. Fingerprint biometric technology makes a map of key points of the lines and whorls of an index finger or thumb, then encodes that information into numerical bits and bytes. A live reading is taken when customers place their finger on a fingerprint scanner, and that reading is checked against the digitized map. As with all biometric technology, the encoded fingerprint map can be used to positively identify a person, but it cannot be "reverse engineered" into the actual fingerprint.


• Voice authentication: The sound of the voice is also individual to each person. Voice biometrics is considered by many experts to be the least expensive and least invasive of biometric technologies, since customers need only speak over the phone to be identified in most instances. Similar to fingerprint biometrics, voice authentication makes a digital map of the peaks and valleys of your voice then cross checks it against your real voice.


• Facial scanning and hand geometry: In these scenarios, digital maps are made of the shape of the face or the shape of the hand. In order to be identified in the first instance, customers stand in front of camera that reads the points of the face and compares them to digital information stored in a computer database. In the second example, customers would grasp an object that reads the shape of their hands and similarly compares that to encoded hand shapes in a database. Experts said these forms of biometric technology can be among the least effective since the shape of the face and hands can easily change.


• Iris scanning: In this instance, a digital map of the shape of the iris is made. A customer stands in front of a camera that takes a quick snapshot, or uses a laser to read the iris, comparing the shape to the digitized information already stored. Considered to be the most accurate of the biometric technologies, it is also considered the most invasive, since it involves the eyes.

While all this may seem same way out and perhaps a bit Big Brother-ish, experts said consumers are likely to cross paths with such technology on an increasing basis, particularly as financial institutions wish to secure customer transactions and cut down on financial fraud.

"My view is that we will probably see some 70 percent of consumer transactions utilize one or more versions of a biometric technology within three years time," said Tom Manning, a senior partner at Bain & Co Inc., an IT strategy and management consulting firm based in Boston.

Manning added that consumers might first see easier to use biometrics like voice authentication, with a more gradual implementation of more costly and accurate technologies like iris scanning in the near future.

"I don't think consumers will go through a week without interacting with biometrics," Manning added. "Let's face it, September 11th put biometrics on the map, creating an immediate recognition of how critical security has become in our connected society."

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at September 13, 2004 03:22 PM