Five years ago, a trailblazer in the field of biometric payments crashed and burned. Pay By Touch wanted to change the way consumers paid for goods at the point of purchase, requiring only a fingerprint to authorize a transaction. The service fell short of mass consumer adoption, and the company – famously known for burning through […]

In the TV show Knight Rider, an agent fights crime with the help of his talking car. While the cars of today aren’t able to converse, voice biometrics could soon enable cars and other systems to recognize voices and authenticate individuals. “Voice biometrics uses the physical characteristics of the voice process in a human for […]

Imagine accessing a secure area or service without fumbling for a card, swiping an ID badge or keying in a PIN. It is possible with new technologies that utilize the human body as the conduit to transmit the identification and authentication data. Thomas Zimmerman introduced this concept in a 1980 MIT thesis. One of the […]

With NFC technology making its way to mobile phones and tablets, companies are looking for ways to leverage its power to simplify business processes. Much of the focus centers on the use of phones for financial transactions, but it’s also possible to put access control credentials onto the secure element so employees can use their […]

One-time passcodes, biometrics, smart cards, mobile devices … the list of possible digital authentication technologies is long. Still, usernames and passwords are the pervasive means to access information and conduct transactions on the Web. Consumers, however, are frustrated with the ever-growing list of complicated passwords, images and security questions guarding both high-security transactions like banking […]

Match-on-card technology marries biometrics with smart cards, enabling users to not only carry their biometric with them but also match it on the card. This means greater privacy for the cardholder and the ability to authenticate without connection to a backend database. In a traditional fingerprint biometric implementation, a user first establishes an identity in […]

In May, the U.S. House Subcommittees on Research and Technology held a joint hearing to discuss the state of biometric technologies, their current applications, future uses, challenges of adoption and how they can impact public policies. Chairman Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.) noted that biometric technology has made inroads in business, government and industry over the last […]

More countries in the European Union are getting on board with the concept of an electronic driver’s license. Based on European Directive 383/2012, which advocates for adding a smart secure element to driver’s licenses, six EU member states have completed the tender procedure, and another six have shown interest in it. A European eLicense will […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation launched Increment three of its Next Generation Identification (NGI) program, which features improved search accuracy for latent fingerprints and adds a nationwide palm print identification system. Lockheed Martin provided the technology behind these added features. These improvements are part of the FBI’s plan to phase in upgrades to its biometric identification […]

McAfee, a division of Intel, is launching a cloud authentication program that leverages face and voice recognition as factors. As reported by Computerworld, the product is called LiveSafe, and it will offer customers 1GB of online storage in the cloud. Users can access it via tablets, smartphones and PCs, and they’re authenticated into the system […]