Research Result :: Putting privacy at the heart of biometric
systems Putting privacy at the heart of biometric systems
(18/08/2011) Without surgery, you can’t change your biometric
data: your fingerprints, your eyes and your face are yours for
life. Biometric security systems use this extremely accurate –
and extremely personal – identity information to verify who you
are. But should the data be misused or stolen the consequences
can be disastrous. A groundbreaking ‘privacy by design’
technique developed by EU-funded researchers promises biometric
security without the risks. Most biometric security systems
store templates of a particular biometric feature of a person,
such as a fingerprint, hand print or iris scan, in a database or
on a chip in a smart card or electronic token. The templates are
then matched with the image generated when a person uses a
scanner to enter a building, access a bank account or boot up
their laptop computer. It is a highly accurate way of
authenticating someone's identity, whether