Popular trends in biometrics: a recap of the week’s top reports

Here’s a recap of the most popular biometrics industry news that appeared on BiometricUpdate.com this past week.

Facial recognition

Facial recognition commanded the headlines this week, with some of the top stories involving this biometric technology. First, a UK police force used facial recognition technology to identify some 90,000 attendees at a music festival and cross-checking them against a database of wanted criminals across Europe, then in a follow up report, defended its use of the facial recognition technology.

The use of facial recognition in airports also proved to make news this week, with Unisys Corporation completing the initial phase of testing of a facial recognition system at Dulles International Airport, Virginia.

Meanwhile Aruba International Airport reported that its biometrics-based passenger processing system pilot is slowly laying down the foundation for what stakeholders hope will eventually evolve into a broader European preclearance program.

Turning over to government facial recognition-related news, Japan’s Ministry of Justice drafted a new five-year government immigration control plan that calls for greater efforts by the immigration department to identify suspected terrorists, as well as the adoption of a facial recognition system for Japanese citizens.

Finally, privacy advocates said they were abandoning the U.S. government’s effort to establish voluntary protocols for facial recognition technology.

Patents

There were a couple of stories this week involving U.S. patents for biometric technologies. First, Amazon announced it received a U.S. patent for ear recognition technology that scans the user’s ear with a smartphone’s front-facing camera to unlock the device when holding it up to the ear to answer a call.

Additionally, BioCatch founder Avi Turgeman explained in an op-ed piece how cognitive biometrics can complement CitiBank’s recently patented device binding solution by providing an extra layer of risk analysis and security.

Other

Telstra Global released a new report that revealed the majority of US consumers using mobile banking applications prefer their mobile devices feature biometric authentication instead of passwords and usernames.

A Department of Homeland Security official announced that federal personnel will soon be required to use a three-factor authentication method that includes a smartcard, a password and their fingerprints before logging on to computers.

Goode Intelligence published its “Analyst Report, Biometrics for Banking; Market and Technology Analysis, Adoption Strategies and Forecasts 2015-2020,” which forecasts that there will be over one billion users accessing banking services through biometric systems by 2017.

Apple announced it will finally expand its Apple Pay service to the United Kingdom next month with an initial 250,000 participating retailers.

EyeLock Inc. announced it is now offering its new access control solution, nano NXT, which offers a sleek design, powerful capabilities, user-friendly operation, and affordability.

HYPR Corp. announced that it submitted its biometric one-time password (OTP) authenticator, HYPR Token, for testing and approval of Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 Level 3 validation for tamper proofing.

And finally, NEC Corporation launched NEC Smart Hospitality Solutions, an integrated portfolio of solutions for the international hospitality industry that includes communications platforms, unified communications (UC) applications, property management systems (PMS), facial recognition systems, digital signage and guest room management systems.

Article Topics

Amazon  |  Apple Pay  |  BioCatch  |  DHS  |  EyeLock  |  Goode Intelligence  |  HYPR  |  Japan  |  NEC  |  Unisys