New Standards from BSI
British Standards Institutions Business Information has published four new international standards on biometric technology, aiming to protect UK business and consumers. The BS ISO/IEC 19794 series of standards cover the science of using biological properties to identify individuals – for example, the recording of fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition – that may become a part of everyday life. It is expected the standards will play a part in the recording of biometric data on UK ID cards and new passports. Recent security threats have focused many on the matter of identity fraud, whose implications can be dire, and the new standards are chiefly a reaction to this increased scrutiny.
The rigorous, transpacific trials were undertaken by Savi Technology and E.J. Brooks in collaboration with trading giant, Mitsui.
Whilst the ongoing fight against terrorism has been catalytic in such moves, there is also the matter of protecting individuals against ID inaccuracies and UK commercial interests in the biometrics industry. BS ISO/IEC 19794 applies to access control and identification systems, for example, information stored on smart cards or other recognition tools, as well as the storage of biometric identification data in corporate databases.
A number of governments including the UK, other European countries, and Israel have stipulated that the use of biometrics by government departments must conform to the new standards, and have recommended that private organisations avoid vendor-specific solutions for data storage. Use of the standards will enable one vendor’s equipment to produce a biometric data block in a format – for instance, a fingerprint or iris image – that can be compared directly with the relevant biometric data block format produced by a different vendor’s equipment, without the need for any collaboration between the two vendors.
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