Apple has unveiled fingerprint rec-ognition on its latest iPhone. The

‘home’ button of the new iPhone 5s is now also a Touch ID fingerprint sensor that allows users to unlock their phone with their fingerprint instead of using a traditional four digit PIN number.

The Touch ID sensor, made of laser-cut sap-phire crystal and surrounded by a stainless steel detection ring, allows users to make iTunes pur-chases without typing their Apple ID password.

“Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world,” says Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president, at the launch of the iPhone 5s. “There’s so much personal stuff on these devices; our email, our photos, our contacts. We have to protect them. The most common way is to set up a passcode. Unfortunately, some people find it’s too cumbersome and don’t set it up.”

The fingerprint sensor is capacitive, 170 microns thin, has a 500ppi resolution, scans sub-epidermal skin layers, and has 360 degree readability, which means that the sensor can read fingerprints from any rotation.

The technology allows the iPhone to read multiple fingerprints and read them from any orientation. Every time it is used, it gets better at reading the fingerprints.

Apple pre-empted security concerns by point-ing out that all fingerprint data is encrypted and locked in the phone’s new A7 chip. The

data is never directly accessible by software, is not stored on Apple’s servers and is never backed up to iCloud.

US analyst firm IHE commented: “The new security measures Apple is adding into iOS7 and the 5s will make the iPhone an even better platform for monetiza-tion. The fingerprint sen-sor on the new 5s helps make the iPhone a safer device for users to entrust with financial details as well as helping users to safely buy App Store apps. Apple is also making it harder for thieves to bypass ‘Find my iPhone’ and ‘Remote wipe’ because users now need an Apple ID and password to turn them off.”

The iPhone 5s also contains a new chip, the M7, a ‘motion processor’ that continuously measures motion data, accelerometer and ges-tural data. Apple has been working with Nike to develop the M7’s capabilities so the focus in on health and fitness applications.

In future, however, it looks possible that this technology could form the basis of a gait-related biometric that could serve to provide future gen-erations of iPhones with multimodal biometrics.

Apple unveils fingerprint tech for iPhone 5s access and iTunes payments

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News

Apple unveils fingerprint tech for iPhone 5s access and iTunes payments 1

ImageWare offers mobile ID management 1

Mobile ID players cover Android base 2

Europeans back biometric tech for e-ID and crime 2

Facebook policy change rekindles privacy fears and it turns to voice biometrics 2

NIST finds ageing does not affect iris systems and adds iris to PIV cards 3

Soft biometrics back driving and gaming 3

Facial biometrics power secure retail payments 12

Vessel mapping takes face recognition to next level 12

Tabletop combines image display and fingerprint recognition 12

SignWave Unlock app maps hand geometry 12

Features

Healthcare biometrics: solving the staff and patient security governance challenge 5

Steve Gold reports.

Biometrics 2013 – the practical application of biometric technology 9

A preview of the Biometrics Exhibition and Conference 2013.

Regulars

Events Calendar 3

News in Brief 4

Product News 4

Company News 4

Comment 12

Contents

biometric TECHNOLOGY

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ImageWare offers mobile ID management

ImageWare Systems has intro-duced its mobile biometric identity

management platform, GoMobile Interactive (GMI), which allows global business, service and content provid-ers to offer users biometric security for their products, services and con-

tent on the Android or iPhone operat-ing systems.

GMI includes a standalone application that can be used as a turnkey solution, as well as a software development kit, enabling integration with mobile applications for Android and iPhone.

Continued on page 2...

iPhone 5s: Touch ID fingerprint sensor for access control and iTunes pay-ments.

Biometric Technology Today September 2013

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NEWS

...Continued from front pageImageware hopes biometric security will

underpin mobile payments. “According to The Gartner Group, worldwide mobile payments will become a $400bn market by 2015 and 67% of users cite they have ‘no trust that their bank details would be secure’ with mobile payments,” says Jim Miller, chairman and CEO of ImageWare Systems.

He points out that according to the Federal Reserve, almost 40% of Americans have already used smart mobile devices for banking and purchases.

Mobile ID players cover Android base

Precise Biometrics, developer of the Tactivo smart card and fingerprint

reader, has launched the Tactivo Mini for Android while Cognitec has brought out a version of its FaceVACS recognition engine for Android-based applications.

The Precise Biometrics release extends the firm’s footprint outside of its iOS-based products and solutions, to provide additional authentication capabilities to Android users, particularly those within the federal govern-ment and enterprise markets.

The new Android offering differs from previous iOS-based solutions, having a more open development environment and access to a shared library that exists across the Android landscape compared to the iOS ‘sandbox’.

Cognitec’s software development kit FaceVACS-SDK provides development tools for the most common face recognition functions: enrolment, verification and identification. Additional functionality is provided for finding human faces and eyes in images, for track-ing faces in video streams, and for analysing and checking face characteristics for biometric photo acquisition.

Europeans back biometric tech for e-ID and crime

Most Europeans would support the use of biometrics in identity

cards or passports, with 81% of French citizens in favour of this application, compared to 73% of Danish and 68% of British respondents, according to a survey carried out by IT services firm Steria.

Respondents across Europe (69%) were also in favour of using biometrics to enter secure areas, led again by the French at 77%, followed by the Danes at 75% and the British at 69%.

However, only 45% of citizens agreed they are in favour of the use of biometrics to replace PIN numbers for bank cards. French people were most enthusiastic about adopting biometric technology to identify criminals, with 89% supporting the use of biometrics for this purpose compared to 80% in Britain and 77% in Germany.

Facebook policy change rekindles privacy fears and it turns to voice

Facebook is considering including members’ profile photos into its

facial recognition database, reports Reuters. At the same time it is invest-ing in voice technology. Facebook revealed its latest plans for facial rec-ognition technology in an update to its data use policy.

Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan is reported to have said that adding members’ public profile photos would give users better control over their personal information, by making it easier to identify posted photos in which they appear.

In the past few weeks Yahoo, too, has turned its attention to facial recognition, acquiring image-recognition startup IQ Engines.

Facebook has also turned to speech rec-ognition with its acquisition of Mobile Technologies, a speech recognition and machine translation technology specialist. Pittsburgh US-based Mobile Technologies developed Jibbigo, a free online translator app.

Facebook’s Tom Stocky says, “Voice technol-ogy has become an increasingly important way for people to navigate mobile devices and the web, and this technology will help us evolve our products to match that evolution.” There is no indication that Facebook’s interest in speech recognition will evolve into voice recognition of individuals.

Facebook withdrew the facial tagging feature in Europe after pressure from European data protection authorities and deleted the facial database of European users.

US authorities have also been feeling the heat from privacy campaigners concerned about unregulated introduction of facial recognition by law enforcement authorities.

facial recognition

market research