Introduction

From the beginning of the century, the use of biometrics in real applications has been more and more extended to other environments different than forensic analysis. With this focus, thorough studies about normalized mechanisms to harmonize the use of biometrics have been made. Many relevant institutions, public and private, have collaborated to obtain standards, technical reports, etc. towards best practices of biometrics.

From the point of view of organizations at the international, European and national level, a big organizational process has been developed. Other organizations have used and adapted current standards to produce their own normative related with the use of biometrics (i.e. ICAO, Frontex, Eu-Lisa, etc).

Biometrics networks where lots of nodes collaborate to obtain the distributed biometrics storage and matching have been implemented in the public (Eurodac, Interpol, etc) and private scenarios.

It is well known the huge number of challenges that have to be faced when a biometric solution is being deployed, in particular when trying to cover a high level of interoperability. One example of these challenges is the difficulty that system integrators (and service providers) have to face when choosing which capture device will they use, as they can only rely on the figures provided by the manufacturer, which sometimes are incomplete. Another example is the rigourness in applying quality requirements to biometric references and probes in different applications or even countries.

A perfect example of this challenge is border control, where the system has to be able to manage ePassports from all around the world, as well as subjects of all kinds. Even with the high number of international standards available nowadays, plus some additional requirements (e.g. those issued by FRONTEX), a huge variety of cases have to be handled, including differences in how the information is stored in the ePassports, the acquisition scenario and requirements, or even the acceptance thresholds.

The aim of this technical report is to analyse the current state of art in biometrics standardization, its use, and the identification of gaps between all the relevant standards used in environments applying the European laws and normative to the applications.

The detected gaps are identified in order to promote the modification of the current standards on biometrics or/and the generation of new standards in Europe.

PD CEN/TR 18030:2023

Personal identification. Biometrics. Overview of biometric verification systems implemented across Europe

Current

Published:

31 Jan 2024