Darrell E. Smith

USA

Biometric Consultant

Mr. Gold has obviously had very little experience in the area of biometric security applications for the financial industry. There are many deployments right now in the banking/financial industry that have been functioning without any major problems for many years. These biometrically secured banking and financial functions range from internal security solutions including access control(computer and physical), network security(1 to 1 and 1 to N matching),the tracking of transactions, and the creation of biometric audit trails. I will name just a few of the banking/ financial institutions that have successfully implemented various biometric based systems that continue to function without any major problems to this day....The Brazilian Mercantile Exchange, Hermes Pension Management LTD.-UK, Credit Suisse-Switzerland, The Internal Revenue Service, ING Direct, Barclays Bank, Mellon Bank, Banko Santander, Bancafe, Banco Falabella, Banco Central De Costa Rica, Banco Convai-Columbia, Banco Produbanco-Ecuador, Banco Reformador-Guatemala, Bank of Cairo-Egypt, Bank of Central Asia, Capitec Bank-South Africa....and the list goes on. Either Mr. Gold was exposed to some very inferior biometric technology, inept integration techniques, or he may have an axe to grind with the biometric industry or one of its leading companies. His comments that banks are worried about the theft of biometric data(templates)lets me know that he does not have a full understanding of how the technology actually works. If he did, he would realize that captured biometric template data is useless, since it must be matched against the live user for verification/authentication/authorization. A hacker or thief would really need to kidnap the live user to be able to break into properly implemented biometric systems(they don't store full biometric images only templates that can't be reverse constructed to an image), and many are now using Match On Card- smart card technology that does not store template information in a database in the first place. If you have to kidnap the user in order to break or hack into a secure system, then you have arrived at the very pinnacle of security solutions. Thus, this is why biometric systems are ramping in demand very rapidly in the banking and financial industries. Mr. Gold is mistaken in his assumptions, at best.