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Biometric standards establish the baseline rules for how biometric technologies and products are developed and deployed. They govern how the individual biometric components should act and interact.
Biometric standards include:
- Data formats used for the storage and interchange of biometric data
- Data interchange metadata and application programming interfaces (APIs) used to link different biometric components across different platforms and systems
- Application profiles that define how to use biometrics for specific purposes
- Conformance requirements and test assertions used to demonstrate that a component satisfies a particular standard
- Performance metrics and requirements for testing performance in specific ways or for specific applications
- Vocabulary used to establish a common language for discussing biometrics
- Implementation recommendations used to address important issues such as privacy, support for the handicapped, etc.
The Benefits of Biometric Standards
Today, the development and adoption of international biometric standards is a key priority for many governments and international organizations. This is driven, in part, by new security concerns and protocols focused on improving identity authentication and reducing identity theft. There is also the concern that new biometric security procedures and requirements, if not developed in accordance with global standards, will unduly inhibit the international flow of people at, for instance, border crossing points. This would have a detrimental impact both on individuals and national economies. Thus biometric standards allow new security measures to be deployed with minimum risk of adverse effects.
Biometric standards also bring a number of other benefits. They can:
- Increase performance and scalability of biometric technologies and solutions
- Reduce development, integration and maintenance costs for both vendors and end users
- Promote greater competition among vendors and lower costs (since no one vendor has an advantage based upon proprietary standards, products or solutions)
- Avoid stovepipe solutions that lock users into single biometric technologies
- Eliminate the risks associated with being dependent on a single vendor
- Permit objective, third party testing, evaluation and certification
- Provide a benchmark for making purchasing decisions
- Promote the widespread use of biometrics
Biometric Testing
In order to have confidence that the various biometric components will act as they are supposed to and support the necessary biometric functions within and among systems, three types of testing are required.
Conformance Testing: validates whether a product conforms to a particular set of standards or specified requirements.
Interoperability Testing: validates that a product can interchange information and interoperate with one or more other products, normally at a specific level of interoperable system performance.
Performance Testing: evaluates the performance of a product or system, according to technological, scenario or operational requirements.
In practice, such testing methods are often combined, sequentially or simultaneously. Before being tested for interoperability, a product should be tested for conformance, as basic conformance is a necessary precondition for interoperability. Similarly, standards for interoperability testing rely strongly on standardized methods of performance testing to establish that a particular set of performance requirements can be met by a group of interoperable products.
Benefits of Third Party Testing
While conformance, interoperability and performance testing can be conducted by a variety of parties (including developers, integrators and end-users), only third-party testers, such as Bion Biometrics, can provide both an expert and objective evaluation of a product according to all necessary conformance, performance and interoperability requirements.
Third-party testing by Bion Biometrics has a number of benefits:
- Objective and verifiable evaluations
- Support for conformance, performance and interoperability testing
- Detailed and up-to-date knowledge of international standards
- Extensive expertise in testing procedures
- Technical expertise in multiple biometric modalities
- Detailed reporting procedures
- Cost effective
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