Biometric Consortium event a success

The Biometric Consortium Conference held last week at the Tampa Convention Center was a success.

Co-sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and National Security Agency (NSA), the event addresses the important role that biometrics plays in identification and verification of individuals for government and commercial applications worldwide.

The conference provided two and a half days of presentations, seminars and panel discussions with the participation of internationally recognized experts in biometric technologies. The 2012 Conference and Expo focuses on biometric technologies for homeland security, identity management, border crossing, electronic commerce, and other applications.

The opening keynote speaker was Steven Martinez, Executive Assistant Director, Science and Technology Branch at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, who spoke about the history of the agency.

Avatier CEO Nelson Cicchitto also lead a session at conference. Cicchitto’s presentation, entitled “Outgrowing Identity Management”, examined univeral assigment management, an entirely new technology category defined by the convergence of requests, approvals, and tracking of personnel access to data, applications, systems, facilities, and equipment.

Dr. Husni Fahmi, who heads up Indonesia’s biometric enrollment program also gave a keynote presentation that outlined how that Asian country is spending US$600 million to provide a national identity card to all of its 172 million residents.

Next year’s marquee conference for the Biometric Consortium will take place September 17-19, 2013, again in Tampa. The organization is a U.S. government sponsored consortia created by NSA and NIST, which serves as the U.S. government’s focal point for research, development, testing, evaluation and application of biometric-based personal authentication technology. Both NSA and NIST co-chair the organization.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  border control  |  ecommerce  |  FBI  |  government  |  homeland security  |  identification  |  identity management  |  national ID  |  NIST  |  verification