Give me some skin: Biometrics get thumbs up

Increasing numbers of Britons are familiar with the use of biometrics and by a margin of three-to-one believe it is more reliable than traditional security methods.

That's according to a survey of 1,067 silicon.com readers carried out during December and, while admittedly not a scientific snapshot of the wider populace, it does show acceptance of the growth of the controversial technology.

This week the implementation of the US-VISIT initiative has hogged the headlines, with Europeans holding visas for entry to the US now controversially required to have photographic and fingerprint records kept by the US authorities.

However, of the 15.2 per cent of silicon.com respondents who said they have used iris scanner or finger/hand-print recognition, many are likely to have done so in the private sector, including gaining access to facilities or certain high-security applications.

A recent poll of predominantly private sector CIOs by silicon.com showed two-thirds see employee- and customer-focused biometrics as at the heart of their IT strategy over the next five years.

A convincing 75.5 per cent of the 1,067 questioned last month answered 'Yes' to the question: "Do you believe biometrics offer greater security and reliability?" - despite concerns in some quarters that techniques such as fingerprint scanning are open to error in a tiny but significant number of cases.

Some technology companies have noted there can be errors when a finger is dirty, while Japanese technology giant NEC, working on the UK's ID card trials, has pointed out voice recognition can be tripped up as humans age and their voices change.

There have also been concerns about the intrusive nature of biometric technology, though applications such as recognising faces at distance over CCTV and matching them to databases are still a long way from being reliable.

David Porter, head of security and risk at security consultancy Detica, said the main battle biometrics has to win is in the area of privacy and data protection. "Biometric technology is here now. It is just the social acceptance,” he told silicon.com.

Analyst house IDC has forecast European sales of biometric technologies will grow from $1bn in 2003 to $3bn in 2006. Fingerprint scanning, voice recognition and facial scanning are set to account for most of that growth.