Biometrics: Advanced Identity Verification

Book excerpt: Biometric identity verification (BIV) offers a radical alternative to passports, PIN numbers, ID cards and driving licences. It uses physiological or behavioural characteristics such as fingerprints, hand geometry, and retinas to check a person's identity. It is therefore much less open to fraudulent use, which makes it ideal for use in voting systems, financial transactions, benefit payment administration, border control, and prison access. This is the first book to provide business readers with an easy-to-read, non-technical introduction to BIV systems. It explains the background and then tells the reader how to get their system up and running quickly. It will be an invaluable read for practitioners, managers and IT personnel - in fact for anyone considering, or involved in, implementing a BIV system. Julian Ashbourn was one of the pioneers in integrating biometric technology and has provided input into many prototype BIV systems around the world.