BSI devises biometric standard for end users

BSI's Business Information Division has published the BS ISO/IEC 19794 series of standards covering biometric technologies to help protect UK businesses and their customers from security breaches. Some of the standards are slated to be used on UK passports and ID cards, while also covering access management systems, forensic identification, identity product vendors and ID issuing authorities.

While the recent threats to national security in the form of terrorist activity have acted as catalysts for the standards, the BSI is also aiming to protect individuals against ID inaccuracies and UK commercial interests in the biometrics sector. According to an official BSI statement: “These standards are essential for those concerned with Government contracts and procurement, or with the enhancement of IT security through the identification of personnel and/or physical access control.” Home Office planners and security staff, systems integrators and security and IT managers are the key target audience.

Importantly, use of the standards will enable one vendor’s equipment to produce a biometric data block in a format – be that a fingerprint, or facial and iris pattern images – that can be compared directly with the relevant biometric data block format produced by a different vendor’s equipment without the need for any collaboration between the two. In other words, interoperability is key.

The four available standards are as follows:

BS ISO/IEC 19794-2:2005 Finger minutiae data – there are two formats, the first provides rapid and easy matching, while the second is a more compressed format that is more suitable where the biometric data block is stored on a smart card.

BS ISO/IEC 19794-4:2005 Finger image data – defines a biometric data block format that contains a digital record of the image of one or more fingers (or of a palm), and specifies how images should be acquired and converted to a digital representation.

BS ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005 Face image data – specifies how facial images should be captured, what type of lighting you need, etc.

BS ISO/IEC 19794-6:2005 Iris image data – two formats are defined here, the first produced by minimal processing of the image and the second by way of more lengthy image processing.