Forget The Federal Government

Businesses Are In Need

Ever since the economic recession back in 2008, the Federal Government here in the United States has always stepped up to the plate to help recover the American economy.  Now, this is in theory, but reality has dictated the opposite in terms of results.  A lot of negativity, very little positive results, in my opinion.  But we will leave that to the economic and political blog posts to discuss all of this.  There is one area also that the Federal Government has played a big role in, and yep, you got it, it has to do with Biometrics.  Ever since this big recession we have had, the Federal Government has been the biggest customer of Biometrics, as well as the biggest awarder of Biometrics contracts.  But, that is soon, perhaps, about to change.  This is according to a survey, conducted by a Biometrics Vendor known as “Digital Persona, Inc.”. 

The details:  “As data protection mandates become stricter and high profile instances of data loss proliferate in the media, a new survey of more than 360 attendees at Infosecurity Europe 2011 found that more than two in five respondents (42 percent) were interested in biometrics for network access control. The study was conducted by authentication and endpoint security provider DigitalPersona, Inc . . . The survey also found that two thirds of respondents (67 percent) hold disk encryption to be an IT security priority.”  (SOURCE:  http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9059/). 

Final Thoughts On Today’s Posting

It should be noted, at least in my opinion, this was probably a rather informal survey, probably not conducted in the most scientific of environments.  As you can see from the above quote, this survey was conducted at the Infosecurity Europe 2011 Conference, and some 360+ plus attendees were polled.  Apparently some out of every 2/5 respondents wanted to have Biometrics as part of the Security portfolio.  It should be interesting to note that this is for logical Security, and not for Physical Access Entry Security applications.  Also key to note is that almost 70% of the respondents believe that disk encryption is a critical component to any Security Policy.  A few of my thoughts here as well. 

First, this is probably the first survey I have seen in some time which reflects the strong preference (could this translate into a need???) of SME’s for Biometrics.  It is refreshing to see that the Federal Government is not the only dominant party interested in Biometrics.  But now, the Biometrics Vendors have to capitalize on these findings and translate these statistics into some hard core growth and revenue numbers for the Biometrics Industry as a whole.  Of course, how all of this is done depends upon the marketing initiatives and campaigns of each of these Vendors.  As I have said before, what will be key is just good ole’ quality customer service.  By this, I mean giving persona attention to each and every potential customer, meeting their exacting needs, and not just leaving them after the sale has been made.  That means providing solid training into the use of the Biometric system. 

In other words, keep out the techno jargon, and Biometric-ese down to a level the customer can understand, and relate to their very own Security needs.  Second, it does not surprise me to see that there is a strong demand for Biometrics for Logical Security.  Given the proliferation of Identity Theft, and the rise in E-Commerce and online transactions, this is the first thing which comes to a person’s mind, even my own.  Third, I was a bit surprised to see Encryption (which, by the way, falls under the realm of Cryptography) as a strong need for SME’s.  Because encryption is often used at the local level (such as the netbook), as the survey found, many SME’s find it too expensive to incorporate at the macro, or global level, like the bigger organizations can afford. 

Also, it makes no sense to encrypt the local data and not the other copies of it which are lying around somewhere in Cyberspace.  Thus, the need to deploy the principles of Cryptography becomes even more crucial.  This is now a segway into an emerging field which combines both Cryptography and Biometrics.  This is known as “BioCryptography”.  In a general and loose sense, this simply means applying the principles of encryption to further enhance the Security of the Biometric Templates. 

So, imagine a Fingerprint Recognition Template further encrypted with an encryption algorithm of some sort (heck, you can even use public keys and private keys as well here).  Now that is protection kicked up by three notches.  I mean, there is not much you can do with a Biometric Template, but adding that extra layer of protection makes just that much more secure.  This is a field which is not just relegated to the world of academia, but something of which the Biometrics Industry needs to play a key role in as well.

Comments

[Pandora Charm Beads]

Don't know what is wrong what is rite but i know that every one has there own point of view and same goes to this one