Beastly Beta Systems Biometrics

Biometrics involves capturing information about something unique to an individual - their voice, face, iris, fingerprint or even the pattern of their veins. That information is stored on a database or token and when an individual wants to access a computer system, enter premises or cross a border, they speak, show their face, eye, finger or wrist. If it matches the information captured about that biometric, in they go.... Admittedly no system is invincible - but biometrics technology is not standing still. The latest systems can tell the difference between a warm, moist, living human fingerprint and a gelatinous copy. Research from the University of Texas comparing human and machine face recognition has shown that when the performance of seven different face-matching algorithms was pitched against the performance of humans matching faces, a handful of the algorithms consistently outperformed the humans.