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Biometrics - Not a Silver Bullet?

Cutter Consortium is an IT advisory firm, comprising a group of more than 100 internationally recognized experts who have come together to delive top-level, critical, and objective advice. In their recent analysis of biometrics based authentication and security, including fingerprints, they look at pros & cons of this latest technology and align it with practical business situations.  If you ever wanted to know or were asked questions about biometrics, security and how your company can benefit from it.  This a a must read study.  Full Article

Japan banks to use fingerprint authentication for ATM widthdrawls

As financial institutions struggle to fight financial related crimes such as identity theft, Japan financial industry is taking first steps towards fighting such crimtes.  Banks in Japan are installing fingerprint embedded ATM machines to fight against counterfit ATM cards.  Full story...

Free viewing of CSI sessions

The conference sessions held at CSI's annual conference back in November are available online. You can view them free after registering. They're all about information security. Whether any of the speakers brush on biometrics, I'm not too sure about.

View the sessions.

Biometrics not infantile. Who knew.

Here's another generic article about the biometric industry, with a little emphasis about voice biometrics halfway through. In many instances, such as in call centers, voice recognition is ideal.

Enterprise Fertile area for voice biometrics.

A silver lining in our future

Well this is a warm article. All the things that ill-informed journalists have been tripping over lately really ARE seen in a positive light to the journalists who DO do their research.

Enjoy a good read for once: Safer and freer in 2005.

How easy it is to work for Apple.. for free.

Okay we're back. Did you keep yourself entertained during the holidays? Even though we weren't helping to spread the word, there was still news being created, and some of it deserves our special attention.

We can start with Apple, whom I don't think there has ever been much said about here. It doesn't have anything to do with biometrics, but it proposes a security question:  Is it really a security flaw when you have people breaking in to do good? Still though, this example shows a rare occurance when someone has been sneaking into a business for six months to do something positive while in most cases, the company isn't so lucky...

Worming into Apple.

You have issues. Privacy issues.

There are apparently so many privacy issues for 2005, they had to pick the top five. As much as this topic is relevant to biometric technology, three pages deep this article is and only mentions it in this one paragraph:

Findings from the Ponemon Institute 2004 Survey on the Public's Perception of Identity Management, sponsored by the International Association of Privacy Professionals and Electronic Data Systems Corp., support the use of biometrics for identity management. More than 70% of respondents said they could accept certain kinds of biometrics, such as a voice recognition or fingerprinting system. The No. 1 reason is convenience. More than 88% of respondents believe biometrics will make identification more convenient and accurate. Among those opposed to biometrics (11%), most appear concerned about secondary or alternative uses of this data.

Top 5 privacy issues of 2005.

Identity Management made easier...ideally.

Since the post on defining identity management solutions just days ago, I've come across another juicy bit along the same lines.

Microsoft drops some infromation on Gemini, the next version of Microsoft Identity Integration Server to be realeased in 2006 or 2007. It is supposed to provide a simple, cost-effective solution that let users manage the identity information themselves.

No talk yet as to whether it will be an option to incorporate the biometrics they have just started providing.

Simpler ID management readied by Microsoft.

Identity Management can't forgo security for convenience.

Identity management solutions need to find a common ground between usability and security. A very good article detailing the real world identity management solutions in place by some of the Fortune 500 companies illustrates that what is ideal and what is real may not always be the case. Especially now since even the term 'identity management' finds itself lacking a universal definition.

The complexity with identity management is that it first means usability. Convenience is key when trying to skim time and money off the top brought about by log-in difficulties for multiple applications. What sounds good to companies now is a single sign-on solution, maybe one for Windows apps and one for web services. The best way to describe something like this would be an organizational tool for speeding up business processes.

It's a management tool in that regard. But what it fails to do is 'identify'. Sure it does once, or twice, but after that, security is no longer a concern. It's an issue. It's something that's bound to be trampled on the first time someone figures out the single sign-on who doesn't belong. Once in, they have access to every application or service permitted.

At least places like BellSouth who are looking to an ID management system also are aware that thousands of customers could be at risk because they want to provide faster customer service. It doesn't have to be one or other - the safety of your confidential information against identity thieves or faster phone customer service - it can be both.

That being made apparent, one solution BellSouth is looking to add to their system is biometric technology. With that, a single sign-on identity solution can be secure, convenient and organized.

Identity management in the real world.
What's identity management? Ask 20 vendors, get 20 answers. But CSOs aren't waiting for a universal definition; they're busy tackling whatever projects meet their business needs.

They were there first.

The fall Biometrics Summit in New York has produced some very education conferences, including one where early adopters of the technology talked about their experiences.
And we're talking the Illinois DMV (implemented back in 1997), and the New York City Law Department (implemented 10 years ago!), among others.
Some good information can be had from these entities that you can't find elsewhere.

Biometrics early adopters reveal secrets, challenges.