Biometrics Examined

Very good IEEE Computer Now issue on the general problem of using biometric methods for identification.

' ... This month, Computing Now explores biometrics—the authentication of persons based on physical or behavioral characteristics. Biometric technology can be found in many aspects of our daily life, from paying for groceries to accessing personal computers and buildings to automatically labeling and organizing digital pictures ....

The fevered pace of biometrics research has created new modalities based on keyboarding patterns or mouse movements, walking patterns (gait), types of utterances (speech), the configuration of veins in the finger or hand (veinal), geometries of the finger or hand, the face, and the complex structures of the melanin-rich area of the eye (iris). These emerging biometric modalities have created vast commercial opportunities outside the more common public sector uses. In fact, Acuity Market Intelligence, a technology strategy company located in Louisville, Colorado, predicts a compound annual growth rate of 60.99 percent for biometric technology from 2009 to 2017, at which point commercial deployment of biometrics will outpace public sector use ... '