Using biometrics to fight identity theft

A new research project called Secure Access Control Over Wide Area Network (SWAN), funded by The Research Council of Norway, will provide authentication and secure access to banking and other services over broadband and mobile networks by using biometric identifiers.

The SWAN-project will research and develop technologies and countermeasures to reduce and weaken spoofing attacks, which lead to a more stable access control platform based on biometrics.

The kick-off meeting of the SWAN-project was held on November 2 and included the project’s six partners from Norway, Germany, France and Switzerland. Gjøvik University College is coordinating the project and is working closely with its partners University of Oslo, Idiap Research Institute in Switzerland, Safran Morpho and Zwipe. The group provides significant experience in identity and biometrics research and in mobile face and speaker recognition as well as anti-spoofing. The team is supported by end users from the financial sector and the Association of German Banks.

The research will initially deal with banking transactions, but the goal is to extend the technology to other areas such as e-health.

Biometric references will be stored, controlled and verified locally, overcoming the need of centralized storage of biometric data. Smartphones will act as hardware tokens to which the additional functionalities will be integrated to capture the biometric characteristics like (face, fingerprint, voice and eye). The focus of the research project will be using biometric authentication to preserve privacy and adapt existing and emerging standards in the field.

Learn more about the project at: http://nislab.no/biometrics_lab/swan

Article Topics

biometrics  |  data storage  |  Idiap  |  privacy  |  research and development  |  smartphones  |  spoof detection  |  standards