Biometrics providers and systems evolve or get left behind

Biometrics are allowing people to prove who they are, speeding journeys through airports, and enabling anonymous online proof of age, but market forces and risks compel providers to evolve or get left behind, as seen in the most-read articles of the week on Biometric Update. DNP and Laxton are combining to scale their portfolio and operations, while regulatory compliance, pilots and testing are all part of the cost of doing business.

Top biometrics news of the week

Dai Nippon Printing and Laxton have each been looking to reach new markets and streamline their biometrics and ID offerings with the next step in their evolutions. So the former has acquired the latter. Laxton Group CEO Lyle Laxton tells Biometric Update in an exclusive interview that the deal is a step towards providing end-to-end identity solutions.

Airports in Fiji and Sri Lanka are streamlining their passenger processing systems biometrics and e-gates to cope with rising volumes. Collins Aerospace and SITA are providing technology for Fiji’s upgrade.

VerifyMy enlists an adult content performer to remind porn sites, search engines and peer-to-peer platforms that the UK’s Online Safety Act makes implementing highly-effective age assurance by the end of next month a cost of continued operation in the nation. The EFF says the EC’s DSA needs to change but if age estimation and age verification vendors can convince users they are trustworthy, the market will take off.

The Age Assurance Technology Trial Australia took on as the cost of setting up age gating for some online services has yielded positive preliminary findings, though some vendors have gone too far anticipating the privacy trade-offs regulators will demand.

And a loss of privacy is not a necessary cost of using online services with increased user control over personal information, ConnectID Managing Director Andrew Black and NAB CDO Sujeet Rana argue in a guest post for Biometric Update.

For Chicago, shutting down online applications for its municipal ID program is the cost of preserving the privacy of some of its most vulnerable residents in the face of a request for data from federal immigration enforcement.

A pilot is the necessary first step for Tanzania’s infant biometric registration initiative, being carried out in collaboration with UNICEF, given the technology innovation and sensitive data involved.

Humanitarian efforts around the world are adapting to a new funding environment as governments cut foreign aid budgets. Simprints Co-founder and CEO Dr. Toby Norman is among the “Goalkeepers” Wired recognizes for efforts towards meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals with his company’s pioneering work on infant biometrics for vaccination programs.

Tackling difficult issues and the time necessary to do so are part of the cost of creating international standards. Christopher Goh explains the ISO working group’s perspective on why server retrieval is included in the ISO /IEC 18013 standard for mobile driver’s licenses to Biometric Update. He argues that the risks of an mDL “phone home” capability being used to track people cannot be eliminated by the standard. The standard may need to change, and public communication from the standards body has already shifted under pressure.

Human review costs a little time for law enforcement using facial recognition, but an incident leading to a wrongful arrest in the U.S. three years ago is costing a sheriff’s office $200,000 to settle a lawsuit.

Face biometrics systems need to evolve to keep up with sophisticated spoof attacks, so liveness testing needs to evolve to keep up with those defenses. Hence iBeta’s introduction of a Level 3 for its biometric presentation attack detection evaluations based on the ISO PAD standard. iBeta Director of Biometrics Ryan Borgstrom, Deputy Director of Biometrics David Yambay and Director of Biometrics Sales and Marketing Evan Call explain the new test and how it was developed in an interview.

The Alan Turing Institute’s Cyber Threat Observatory joined those enumerating the threats that defenses must evolve to guard against last year. The Observatory hosted a half-day workshop to share its observations threats to DPI this week, including the extent to which digital identity systems are prized targets. Governments will have to grapple with the same kinds of decisions that have led a wave of biometrics and FIDO adoption within the financial services industry.

Please tell us if you see any posts, panel, podcasts or other content you think we should share with the people in biometrics and the digital identity community through the comments below or social media.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  week in review