company news about New biometrics market forecast examines next generation technology

MarketsandMarkets has peered into its crystal ball, forecasting the future of biometrics technology beyond its flagship modalities.

The new report, entitled “Next Generation Biometric Technologies Market Global Forecast 2012-2017,” examines the next steps for biometrics specifically as it relates to face recognition, fingerprint recognition, voice recognition, iris recognition and signature recognition. Biometric authentication has long been synonymous with fingerprints, but the number of unique physical identifiers has grown to include face, iris, voice, signature, palm, vein and DNA.

At present, fingerprint recognition is the foremost biometric modality in use, comprising roughly 65% of the total market for biometric technology. However, MarketsandMarkets expects significant growth potential in iris recognition technology the coming five years.

Iris recognition technology is the most accurate technology available among all the biometric modalities. This accuracy is likely due to the fact that the shape and size of the iris remains constant throughout an individual’s life even in cases of surgery or transplantation.

The prevailing sentiment is that biometric technology provides a high degree of security and convenience that can ensure the confidentiality of personal data. This increased confidentiality offers reprieve as passwords and PINs, which can be easily guessed, forgotten, copied, stolen or simply misplaced, are anything but airtight.

Biometric authentication can also deter theft, as sensitive data is stored as a digital record in a database, making it difficult to reconstruct, decrypt or manipulate the information. While the shift away from passwords is essential, privacy concerns associated with the use of biometrics persist.

MarketsandMarkets’ three main categories of privacy concerns are as follows:

• Unintended functional scope: Authentication that goes further than just authentication. Finding a tumor, for example.
• Unintended application scope: The authentication process correctly identifies the subject when the subject did not wish to be identified.
• Covert identification: The subject is identified without seeking identification or authentication, that is, a subject’s face is identified in a crowd.

Biometrics has seen implementation in virtually every sector of commerce and enterprise, including travel, immigration, transportation, government, finance, consumer electronics, health care and home security. In fact, MarketsandMarkets estimates that the global biometrics market is expected to reach $13.89 billion by 2017, at an estimated compound annual growth of 18.7%.  At the heart of this increased growth will be government, defense, travel and immigration.