Despite biometric technologies such as fingerprint and iris scanners seeing a jump from science fiction to science fact in areas such as law enforcement, national ID programs and commercial access control, implementation is still fairly limited worldwide with fingerprint scanners being the main technology seeing any widespread use, according to a CNN article.
Regardless of the slow adoption of the technologies, research and development labs around the world are still coming out with new modes of biometrics regularly. An example of this can be seen in Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Biometrics Research Center where scientists are developing a way to discern someone’s identity via the shape of their tongue. Other companies that develop biometric technologies are finding ways to incorporate their existing technology into devices that make them easier to use such as Fujitsu fitting their palm-vein scanning technology into computer mice to authenticate users from their mouse.
As one of the major concerns facing the adoption of biometric technology is privacy and security of the data, the Biometrics Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about biometrics, has begun offering a service where they will assess the vulnerabilities of biometric systems for developers. Among the recommended ways to combat security issues are strong data encryption, having systems require multiple modes of biometrics for authentication such as fingerprint and iris scans or including other technologies to check for liveness such as infrared cameras in sensors or heat-detection technology.
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