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| The Biometric Consortium Conference September 23 - 25, 2002 |
About Biometrics |
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Biometrics are automated methods of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions. As the level of security breaches and transaction fraud increases, the need for highly secure identification and personal verification technologies is becoming apparent. |
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Biometric-based solutions are able to provide for confidential financial transactions and personal data privacy. The need for biometrics can be found in federal, state and local governments, in the military, and in commercial applications. Enterprise-wide network security infrastructures, government IDs, secure electronic banking, investing and other financial transactions, retail sales, law enforcement, and health and social services are already benefiting from these technologies. Biometric-based authentication applications include workstation, network, and domain access, single sign-on, application logon, data protection, remote access to resources, transaction security and Web security. Trust in these electronic transactions is essential to the healthy growth of the global economy. Utilized alone or integrated with other technologies such as smart cards, encryption keys and digital signatures, biometrics are set to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily lives. Utilizing biometrics for personal authentication is becoming convenient and considerably more accurate than current methods (such as the utilization of passwords or PINs). This is because biometrics links the event to a particular individual (a password or token may be used by someone other than the authorized user), is convenient (nothing to carry or remember), accurate (it provides for positive authentication), can provide an audit trail and is becoming socially acceptable and inexpensive. More information about biometrics, standards activities, government and industry organizations and research initiatives on biometrics can be found in the following web sites: * Biometric Consortium: http://www.biometrics.org* NIST ITL May 2001 Bulletin on Biometrics: http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/bulletns/bltnmay01.htm
Examples
of biometrics standards-related activities include: CBEFF was published
in January 2001 as a NIST
publication NISTIR 6529 and BioAPI V1.1 was recently (February 13,
2002) approved as an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
standard: ANSI INCITS 358-2002 Information technology - BioAPI Specification (Version 1.1).
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The BioAPI Consortium was founded to develop a biometric Application Programming Interface (API) that brings platform and device independence to application programmers and biometric service providers. BioAPI has 89 member organizations. BioAPI has developed a specification and reference implementation |
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for a standardized API compatible with a wide range of biometric applications programs and a broad spectrum of biometrics technologies. Version 1.1 of the BioAPI Specification and the Win32 reference implementation (open source) can be downloaded from the BioAPI web site. BioAPI V1.1
was fast tracked as an ANSI standard though the National Committee for Information Technology Standards
(NCITS). BioAPI has been recently approved as a US national standard
through the International Committee for
Information Technology Standards (INCITS). It was approved February 13,
2002 as ANSI/INCITS 358 - 2002 - Information technology - BioAPI Specification.
BioAPI web site: http://www.bioapi.org
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CBEFF describes a set of data elements necessary to support biometric technologies in a common way independently of the application and the domain of use. It facilitates biometric data interchange between different system components or between systems and promotes interoperability of biometric-based application |
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programs and systems. CBEFF has been developed in coordination with industry consortiums (BioAPI Consortium and TeleTrusT) and a standards development group (ANSI/ASC X9F4 Working Group). It is described in detail in NISTIR 6529, available at the CBEFF web site: http://www.nist.gov/cbeff. The International Biometric Industry Association (IBIA) is the Registration Authority for CBEFF formats IDs: http://www.ibia.org/formats.htm. CBEFF is being augmented (downward compatible revision) at the NIST/BC Biometrics Working Group.
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This working group supports advancement of technically efficient and compatible biometric technology solutions on a national and international basis. It consists of over 90 organizations representing biometric vendors, system developers, information assurance organizations, commercial end users, universities, |
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government agencies, national labs and industry organizations. The working group is currently developing a simple testing methodology to determine the performance of biometric systems, addressing issues on biometric assurance, biometric template protection & integrity, and biometric security issues. CBEFF is being augmented to accommodate a compliant smart card format, to define validity periods for the biometric data, to specify Product Identifiers and to specify a CBEFF nested structure. Web site: http://www.nist.gov/bcwg |
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