Crossmatch wins $5.8M IARPA contract

Crossmatch has been awarded a $5.8 million contract to develop next-generation presentation attack detection (PAD) technologies for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Thor program.

“Innovation has been a driving force within Crossmatch from the onset and IARPA’s Thor program will allow us to innovate and develop new technologies and solutions that surpass existing PAD systems,” said Crossmatch SVP-CTO Bill McClurg. “These solutions will drive new commercial opportunities and market demand, and Crossmatch is excited to have this opportunity to participate in the IARPA Thor program.”

Biometric presentation attacks attempt to circumvent the protection of a biometric system by falsely representing biometric data in such a way as to gain access or avoid identification. The goal of the Thor program is to develop reliable PAD technologies not easily deceived when someone attempts to disguise their true biometric identity in order to game the system.

Crossmatch will work closely with IARPA, a research arm within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to develop a system capable of not only capturing more robust information from biometric samples that identify and measure the likelihood of presentation attacks but also identify unknown presentation attacks based on factors like normalcy modeling for anomaly detection.

Research and development will be ongoing through early 2021.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  Crossmatch  |  IARPA  |  spoofing