Biometric Technology Application Manual - ITI Observatorio ...

Section 1 4 Introduction
There are several mature biometric systems available in
the market today and many successful applications of
biometric technology. The technology has proven capable
of decreasing costs and increasing convenience
for both users and system administrators. Furthermore,
properly employed these systems are capable of improving
privacy and resisting identity theft.
One of the major impediments to widespread implementation
of biometric technologies at the consumer level is
the wide variety of competing, vendor-proprietary devices
that have been developed without general standardization.
The primary barriers to using biometrics more
broadly in the private sector have had to do with limited
compliance with existing standards, scalability of the systems,
interoperability, usability, security, buyer concerns
about return on investment (ROI), and issues concerning
attacks on privacy. Each of these barriers have reasonable
solutions or are susceptible to an effective and acceptable
compromise..
The costs of biometric devices and software have declined
rapidly over recent years and the technology is now being
offered as a standard component in a number of security
applications, such as laptop computer login and
facility access control. In addition, significant increases in
computing power, along with continuing advancements
in biometric software algorithms and sensor hardware,
have resulted in vastly improved speed and accuracy for
the more widely used biometric methods. Since the tragic
events of September 11, 2001, governments have rushed
to embrace biometrics as a key component in their multilayered
security systems for anti-terrorism and homeland
security applications such as border control.
Utilized in isolation or integrated with other technolo-
Version 2 – Summer 2008