The future of biometrics holds great promise for law enforcement applications, as well for private industry uses. By measuring facial geometry, surveillance systems can identify suspects against characteristics stored in the security system's database. "There is a popular tendency to regard biometric products as sci-fi mythology, but the reality is that biometrics is the future of the security industry and is quickly becoming recognized as the most accurate identification technology in the market," claims Don Mihae who was recently hired by JAD Communication & Safety Systems (JADCS) to lead its security division.

Biometrics' future will include e-commerce applications for extra security on the checkout page, and biometrics will guard against unauthorized access to cars and cell phones. In the future, biometric technology will further develop 3-D infrared facial recognition access control, real-time facial recognition passive surveillance, and visitor management authentication systems. Already A4Vision, a provider of 3-D facial scanning and identification software uses specialized algorithms to interpret the traditional 2-D camera image and transfer it into a 3-D representation of a registered face. This makes it almost impossible to deceive the biometric system with still photos or other images.

Strengthening existing biometric innovations for future growth

All of these security innovations will make biometric technology more accurate and make its usage more widespread.

• Access control facial recognition -- Biometric technologies will permit authorized users entry to a property or to specific location in a building. Today, A4Vision uses a 3-D infrared facial recognition system to project subdued light onto a subject's face for optimal identification. But in the future, this biometric technology will be strengthened so that the subject will not have to be a just few feet away from the video surveillance cameras.

• Facial recognition passive surveillance -- Hidden surveillance cameras will be set up to monitor an entranceway of any type of building to accurately identify a potential suspect or terrorist against a database of millions of images in less than one second. Alerts will then transmitted to security personnel in real time.

• Alert management -- This is a fully customizable command center to guard against potential security breeches. The center uses real-time technologies to deliver security alerts to multiple locations through PDA (personal digital assistant) devices, and other mobile technologies.

As the need increases for government bodies and large firms to deploy hi-tech security systems to solve crimes or protect employees, biometric technology will improve, as investor confidence increases. Once the consumer confidence is evident, biometric research will provide further innovations, which will in turn strengthen future performance, and this cycle will continue to build in a positive direction.

But for the biometric technology field to grow, industry standards must exist so that there is the greatest compatibility between applications and hardware. The ISO/IEC JTC1 is the governing body of international biometric standards, but this standardization is still in progress. In the future, fixed biometric standards will be in place to guide vendors and developers in the areas of biometric application profiles, interfaces, and system performance.

With such a young technology, biometric and identification technology has everything to gain with improved standards and accuracy. In probably a short time, biometric developers will surpass the quality of their current product so that the future of the biometric field will be assured in the hi-tech marketplace.

Copyright © 2005 Evaluseek Publishing.