Biometric Security System

After years of confinement in the likes of James Bond films, biometric security withdraws out of the cinema screen and the business environment and the general public.

In 1971, when he returned to his penultimate bite of the cherry Bond, a Mr. Connery was already starting to look just a little long in the tooth for the role. Nothing too mean. A double chin here, there is a widening belt. Aging temples notwithstanding, however, that familiar and unmistakable air - a sort of threat unshakable cool - stayed. If anything, in fact - perhaps fueled by the know-how that maturity so often - big Sean was even more confident.

This film, Diamonds Are Forever, also saw the debut of another thing that has improved somewhat with age, biometric security. (In case you have not seen, Tiffany Case, aka Jill St. John, tries to cover as Scotch Bond smuggler Peter Franks, lifting his fingerprint from a glass and running it through a scanner. It does not work . 007 is wearing falsies provided, of course, by Q).

OK, so it took time to mature and can not claim to have done enough with Mr. Connery, style, and economy, but there is no doubt that biometrics has come a long way since the early 70s. And everything - a bit like Bond himself - the technology has had a history of flattering to deceive, he is gaining confidence and market share.

Indeed, due to several factors - the expansion of a directory, greater availability, a lack of faith and confidence in the security password-traditional, and the increasing variety and weight of regulatory compliance , for example - biometrics now seems nailed a key role in supporting business and IT security, with Frost and Sullivan predict biometric revenues to hit $ 2.07bn in the five years in the financial sector alone. So what made the differencea What happens inertiaa

Overall, it was a base case of needs must, says Wayne Parslow vice-president of EMEA operations specialists Imprivata biometric device, which says that organizations increasingly realize that even simple events of users malicious steal the credentials of their colleagues, or users sharing passwords between them may constitute serious breaches in security policy. And many are now turning to strong authentication and more specifically biometrics as an effective definitive answer, "he said.

Perhaps the most fundamental driver behind this is that biometrics is the only way to truly link an individual to a specific time and place, and a particular set of actions. And while useful - especially as complementary elements in two authentication scenarios and threefactor - other forms of authentication such as tokens, smart cards and passwords can still be shared, lost or stolen or simply forgotten.

The glare of publicity has not hurt biometrics. The last 12 months have seen more than their fair share of security depending on the front page stories. One of the most publicized - that of rogue trader, Jedr�me Kerviel and his � 3.6 billion fraud at Societe Generale - will cause an internal investigation which was among the recommendations the introduction of biometric security.

The fact that biometric technology is finding a wider range of uses these days is also helping drive the industry forward, "says Cyrille Bataller, a partnership with Accenture Technology Labs. "With mandates for use in civil identification in travel documents, border entry and exit control, visas, residence permits, identity cards and health cards, biometric technologies are moving from niche applications and criminal justice in integrating civilian applications, "he said.

Traction for such use is apparently widespread in the public and private in the United Kingdom, for example, where the government seeks to use biometrics in national ID cards, and p.