April 2013 Biometric Technology Today

EVENTS CALENDAR

3

NEWS

experimenting with voice recognition capabili-ties on its mobile apps that will allow clients to conduct simple banking transactions by speaking rather than typing. It is also explor-ing the use of biometrics within mobile apps for purposes such as client login.

US mortgage technology provider SharperLending LLC has updated its set-tlement services technology platform to enable the secure acceptance of a borrower’s authorisation signature electronically for tax forms. SharperLending has partnered with Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC) supplier of biometric signature verifica-tion systems to enable its new feature.

Italian bank UniCredit has begun market tests of a new biometric payment system that uses palm scanning technology from Fujitsu, reports Finextra.

The Papillon sensor will be connected to a conventional POS terminal and may ultimately replace ATM and credit cards entirely as a way of recognising individuals for payment purposes and the automatic debiting of current or credit card accounts.

Allam Marine flagship office implements ievo readers

The Allam Marine offices building in East Yorkshire, UK, has imple-

mented ievo biometric fingerprint readers to control access to the £4.5m building.

Allam Marine needed a particular finish for the door access system together with a specific set of access requirements. The installation involved a boon edam circlelock entrance. This allowed for standard access along with second-ary opening actions from dedicated readers else-where in the building. One of the main benefits of the system is the ability to ‘latch’ open the circle lock in the event of corporate open days, together with full biometric accountability.

Silicone fingers spoof fingerprint system in Brazil

A Brazilian doctor faces charges of fraud after being caught using

silicone fingers to sign in for work for absent colleagues, according to local reports.

The doctor was alleged to have used pros-thetic fingers to fool the biometric employee attendance device used at the hospital near Sao Paulo, covering up the absence of six colleagues. The doctor was reported to be carrying six sili-cone fingers at the time of the arrest, three of which have already been identified as bearing the fingerprints of co-workers.

IEEE calls for papers on biometric recognition

The IEEE Workshop on Biometric Recognition and its Applications 2013

is inviting papers. The workshop is to be held in August 2013 in Beijing, China.

Papers are invited from academic and indus-trial research institutions, describing original results, new technical implementations, or in-depth user studies, including but not limited to face detection, recognition and tracking; iris recognition, sensor design; fingerprint recogni-tion; speaker voice recognition; writing and signature recognition; gait recognition; palm recognition; facial expression recognition; other biometrics recognition and processing; identi-fication based on multi-biometrics data fusion; sensor design; biometrics database; biometrics application technique; biometrics for network; brain-computer interface.

The submission deadline is 31 May 2013.

Frost & Sullivan forecasts expansion of border control biometrics

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan forecasts that the global border con-

trol and biometrics market will expand steadily due to increasing international co-operation on travel security issues.

Frost & Sullivan’s ‘Global Border Control and Biometrics Market Assessment’ report finds

Continued on page 12...

access control

research

8–9 May 2013San Francisco, US9th Voice Biometrics ConferenceOpus Research presents the conference.More information: http://voicebiocon.com

13–16 May 2013Birmingham, UKIfsec InternationalFocuses on commercial and government security, bringing together 25,000 plus security professionals from over 100 countries.More information: www.ifsec.co.uk

21–23 May 2013London, UKSecurity Document WorldThis show, now in its seventh year, comprises one of the industry’s largest dedicated exhibitions, with more than 90 exhibitors and 1300 attendees in 2012, and a large conference with more than 350 delegates.More information: www.sdw2013.com

30–31 May 2013Sydney, Australia Biometrics Institute Asia-Pacific Conference 2013Formerly known as The Biometrics Institute Australia Conference & Exhibition, the Asia Pacific Conference 2013 will be held at new location, Dockside, Sydney. The conference will provide an insight into the latest developments and best practice examples of biometric technologies. More information: http://www.biometricsinstitute.org/events.php/416/biometrics-institute-asia-pacific-conference-2013

10–12 June 2013Chicago, US2nd International Conference and Exhibition on Biometrics & Biostatistics The event will promote the national and inter-national exchange of knowledge and research techniques with leading universities, research institutions throughout the world. The scientific programme will focus on advances in the research and serve as a catalyst for the advancement of biostatistics and biometrics.More information: http://www.omicsgroup.com/conferences/biometrics-biostatistics-2013.

27 June 2013LondonBiometrics Technology Showcase Europe 2013The Biometrics Institute launched this event in June 2012 and is now organising it as an annual gathering of the industry. Over 70 delegates were registered for this event and it provided a setting for suppliers to display their latest services and products to existing and prospective clients.More information: http://www.biometricsinsti-tute.org/events.php/370/technology-showcase-europe-2013

Ievo biometric fingerprint readers control access to the £4.5m Allam Marine building.

12

NEWS/COMMENT

Biometric Technology Today April 2013

...Continued from page 3that the market earned revenues of $5,836.5m in 2012 and estimates this will reach $15,836m in 2021. The research covers security, military, government and law enforcement applications.

It finds that while the market offers immense growth potential, issues related to privacy and proving quantifiable returns on investment will have to be tackled if the market is to take off.

US leads face and voice biometrics market

Following several success stories from government and commer-

cial implementations, face and voice biometric technologies are now well accepted, according to Global Industry Analysts’ ‘Face and Voice Biometrics Global Strategic Business Report’.

According to the report, the US continues to remain the largest regional market, accounting for a majority share in global sales. Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing regional market with sales in the region at a CAGR of about 28.5% over the analysis period. Face biometrics represents the fastest growing product segment with sales at a CAGR 19%.

In Europe, the adoption potential of biometric solutions remains high in commercial shipping and international trade and in immigration control.

AMD APU to include gesture and facial recognition

Chipmaker AMD has introduced a new APU (accelerated processing

unit) codenamed “Richland”, which is shipping to OEMs. Richland is expected to come bundled with new software for consumers including gesture- and facial-recognition.

The follow-on to Richland will be the APU codenamed Kaveri with new heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) features, expected to begin ship-ping to customers in the second half of 2013.

Nuance to use voice-prints to automate password resets

Nuance has launched FastReset to enable employees to reset their

own passwords by speaking, eliminat-ing the need to use IT support people for assistance.

With FastReset, employees use a phone or mobile phone to enrol their voiceprint. When the employee needs to reset their password, they can use the Microsoft Windows login screen or call the automated system to speak a prompted phrase, such as “My voice is my password”. With a successful match of their voiceprint, their password is reset.

FastReset has out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft Active Directory and Credential Provider, and works within an organisation’s existing telephony infrastructure.

Barclays wealth investment management has been using voice biometrics from Nuance since 2012 to streamline authentication when clients call the bank, reports Computer Weekly. The bank has deployed Nuance FreeSpeech in its call centre, which, combined with caller ID, allows a call centre agent to identify customers after a minute of conversation.

Vision-Box puts up biometric periscope

Vision-Box, automated border control systems and electronic identity man-

agement solutions provider, has revealed its biometric periscope for simultaneous capture of face and iris, at a distance.

On detecting the user, the biometric periscope adjusts height and illumination to allow simultane-ous, full-frontal ICAO-compliant iris and face cap-ture and matching. The user can keep walking and does not need to interact with the periscope.

“Many airlines and airport operators have requested from us this additional feature in our products in order to better address the challenges and requirements of the passenger experience,” says Miguel Leitmann, senior vice president.

Vision-Box operates automated borders in more than 30 international airports and over 3,000 electronic identity systems in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

It is now almost two years since Eric Schmidt, chair-man of Google, made head-lines with his comments that Google would “get right up to the creepy line but not

cross it” when it came to collecting personal data such as that used for facial recognition. At that time he said Google had built but ‘withheld’ facial recognition technology. “As far as I know it’s the only technology Google built and after looking at it we decided to stop,” he said.

Schmidt expressed particular concerns about the combination of facial recognition and mobile tracking, fearing the technology could be used against citizens. Lately though, Google is showing renewed interest in biometric and pattern recognition technologies.

PatentBolt reports that Google has finally been granted a patent for its facial unlock technology, which is already familiar to users of Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich. The patent is said to include tweaks to identify ‘liveness’ to address early teething issues of users being able to bypass the system with a photograph.

Google is also reported to be introducing facial recognition capabilities to its Knowledge Graph feature. It has added facial recognition to a feature that provides information about movies streamed from the Google Play store to Android tablets. When users pause a movie, it will display information on the actors and music onscreen. Google uses facial recognition

to identify the actors in the scene that has been paused and searches for information on them.

In the real world, InSight, a partly Google-funded project, is investigating the possibility of using clothes and the patterns on them to help Google Glass wearers identify people in crowded locations, such as shopping centres, reports New Scientist.

The system is based on a smartphone app and camera to generate and share what is rather con-fusingly called a ‘fingerprint’ of a person based on photos captured of them as they use the device. It seems users have to opt in to this and the system only works while they are wearing that day’s outfit.

Commentators are describing this as possibly incremental to facial recognition, which is diffi-cult to achieve in a shopping centre crowd, for example, where people are walking in all direc-tions. A future combination of facial recogni-tion and pattern recognition applied to cloth-ing, powered by the might of Google, could produce an unparalleled force for biometric identification.

This comes as six European data protection agencies began considering legal action over Google’s privacy policy. Late last year a European Commission working party reported that the privacy policy did not meet EC standards on data protection and gave Google four months to comply. That period has now elapsed and the authorities are deliberating as to their next move.

Tracey Caldwell

COMMENT

development