IrisGuard director discusses iris biometrics, identity protection in TV appearance

IrisGuard Deputy Director Simon Reed talked about biometric iris recognition technology in the latest episode of the BBC’s Frontline Fightback program.

Frontline Fightback is a series focusing on how the latest advances in technology, including biometrics, are helping police forces in the battle against crime.

The latest episode analyzed an armed robbery in a jewelry shop in Hinckley, Leicestershire, in 2019, as well as the series of acid attacks on moped delivery riders in London in 2018.

In both cases, CCTV and biometric technologies helped identify the attackers.

The program also tackled issues related to identity fraud, and how biometric identification and authentication methods are fundamental to prevent this type of crime.

“Protection of our identity, going forward, is going to be incredibly important,” Reed said on the program. “At the moment, we have many systems that tell us how we should provide our identity.”

Moving forward, however, individuals should be able to decide how to prove their identity via biometrics and iris recognition, in particular, Reed explained.

“The iris does not change, from 18 months of age until death, it’s exactly the same.”

This, according to Reed, is one of the reasons why iris recognition systems, when properly calibrated and equipped with anti-spoof capabilities, can identify individuals with a level of accuracy superior to any other forms of biometric recognition.

“We are taking a picture of your eye,” Reed explained, describing the IrisGuard platform, “then passing it through an algorithm which generates a template, and it’s that template which is then used to create your unique iris identity.”

IrisGuard was recently named a Vanguard member of The Million Lives Club initiative, a global community of partners supporting societal and humanitarian impact initiatives.

Article Topics

authentication  |  BBC  |  biometric identification  |  identity verification  |  iris biometrics  |  iris recognition  |  IrisGuard