Biometrics privacy: Technologies and applications

The use of biometric traits for security and secure applications (including personal identification, access control, forensics applications, e-commerce, e-government, and e-health) is receiving an increasing attention. The main reason for such an interest is that biometric features of individuals are tightly bound with their identities. Moreover, they cannot be easily forgotten or lost. Therefore they provide significant potentials in applications where both security and client convenience are needed. A serious concern in the design and use of biometric authentication systems is the privacy protection of the information derived from human biometric traits, especially since such traits cannot be replaced. The goal is to secure the biometric data and prevent improper access and abuse of biometric information. Some techniques have been proposed in addition to conventional cryptography, by combining cryptography and biometrics to allow for building protection in the biometric templates themselves. These solutions can increase the confidence in biometric systems when biometric information is stored for verification, even though some critical aspects must be addressed properly to ensure their usability with real biometrics in real-world applications. This keynote speech introduces the biometrics technologies and applications with specific emphasis on a comprehensive system design methodology which takes into account the need for privacy protection among the application requirements. Privacy-aware multimodal biometric system and modular structured schemes are presented to adapt the solution to the application requirements. Recent results are discussed.