By Lilia Guan
 
The terrorist attacks in both the United States and the United Kingdom, ten years ago, have heightened the awareness of border security in countries all over the world.
 
Biometrics has become the weapon of choice in fighting border control and ensuring the correct identification of nationals and travellers.
 
The technology consists of methods for uniquely recognising humans based on physiology (facial recognition, fingerprinting, DNA, or iris recognition) or behavioral traits.
 
NEC Australia’s business development manager of biometrics and identity management, Peter Ives told Government News, with individuals carrying less identification police officers also need to be able to do checks without lengthy interviews.
 
“After September 11 2001, nearly all biometric projects were driven by federal government for border protection,” he said.
 
“However the technology is also being used by the criminal justice sector. The use of face recognition in licenses to prove the integrity of the identification is important for spot checks by police.”
 
Mr Ives said NEC was also seeing biometric projects utilising cloud computing, within the criminal justice sector.
 
“We are seeing police forces log onto cloud computing reference sites and also automated fingerprint identification systems within a cloud community,” he said.
 
“This has huge implications for brining biometric cloud computing out into the field.”
 
Mr Ives said the security implications of using biometrics in a cloud computing environment are addressed in the architecture stage.
 
“I can’t think of any private or public cloud computing procurement where we haven’t been through a check list of security of solutions,” he said.
 
“It’s always something we are aware in government organisations and significantly addressed in the architecture stage.
 
“We are aware of the privacy aspects and national privacy laws in relation to biometrics.”
 
Mr Ives joined NEC a month ago, but has worked in the field of biometrics physical access control and nearly all biometric government projects, for the past 14 years.