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[Dave Birch] We’ve discussed the importance of voice biometrics in the digital identity world before, and it’s clear that they will change quite a few businesses once they work properly (ie, not perfectly, but with the right balance of false accept and false reject rates). Payments, for example. If you could pay for things by just talking into your mobile phone that would be pretty good. And friendly, and easy.

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Continue reading “Voice overs”

[Dave Birch] I happened to be talking to someone about biometrics last week, discussing the point about convenience (rather than security) being the driving force in consumer biometric adoption and it reminded me to note that growth in biometric use in the Asia-Pacific region. Results from the recent Unisys survey revealed that respondents from Malaysia and Singapore chose fingerprint scan as the preferred security authentication mechanism to verify their identity with banks, government departments and other organizations. I’m sure this is a window into the future everywhere. It may well be that a couple of generations from now wallets, money clips and purses will be purely cosmetic. The need for somewhere to carry cards, driving licences and other forms of identity will have gone, along with the need for metal keys. As this article says, all of your relevant details will have been combined onto a single miniature chip which will, for those who are fashion conscious, be carried on a bracelet or necklace (see, for example, the contactless bracelets we helped O2 implement). Some people may even choose to have it implanted under the skin for security purposes. Other (eg, me) may implant it just out of intense curiosity to see how it works in practice.

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Continue reading “is there a doctor in the house?”

[Dave Birch] If you ask anyone who actually knows anything about security about risks, they’ll always tell you the same thing: insiders are the biggest threat. They might add that insiders who don’t understand how to use the most basic computer security measures and don’t understand how software that is integral to Web 2.0 works. A Japanese policeman has been sacked after the personal information of thousands of people relating to criminal investigations was leaked on to the internet from his computer. The officer revealed the details via peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software on his PC. He had allegedly installed the Winny file-sharing software on to his machine and was unaware that sensitive data was being made available to other users via the P2P network, leading to the personal details of 12,000 people related to criminal investigations being shared and along with 6,600 police documents (including interrogation reports, victim statements, and classified locations of automatic licence plate readers). What’s more, the files included a list of the names, addresses and personal information concerning 400 members of the notorious criminal gang Yamaguchigumi yakuza. I wouldn’t try opening a bank account and taking out a loan in one of their names, to be honest, as they may take a more robust approach to identity theft than the Information Commissioner.

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Continue reading “Identity theft that matters, not dumb credit card stuff”

[Dave Birch] I’ve mentioned a few times at various seminars that the way that the Dutch have approached the development of a national contactless smart card for transport ticketing should be studied to see what lessons can be learned and used to inform other developments. The basic reason for this is the structure of the procurement: in short, organisations were asked to tender using whatever standards and interfaces they liked but in the knowledge that whoever won would have to provide the specifications licence-free so that anyone could develop new products and services to use the cards. It’s already paid off. When Linkdump reported that students developing open source applications found a security error in the card, it reinforced to me the wisdom of the Dutch approach. The combination of open source and independent scrutiny makes that system as a whole more, not less, secure.

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Continue reading “An open source national ID scheme”

[Dave Birch] An NIST report shows that machines can out-perform humans at face recognition under certain circumstances. The FRVT 2006, for the first time, integrated measuring human face recognition capability into an evaluation of face recognition technologies and the performance of humans and computers was compared on the same set of images. The experiment found that algorithms are capable of human performance levels, and that at false accept rates in the range of 0.05, machines can out-perform humans. Note also that one of the reports findings is that the performance iris, face and 3D face is comparable when all three biometrics are acquired under controlled illumination (my italics). Much to the joy of the Bouncer’s Union, however, it seems that machines are unlikely to replace nightclub doormen any time soon.

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Continue reading “Man vs. Machine”

[Dave Birch] Using a reasonable model, the global RMT (real money trade) market looks to be around $2 billion, which implies a virtual GDP of around $27 billion. Note that this is significantly greater than the GDP of many countries. In fact, according the World Bank, it puts the virtual realm somewhere between Lithuania and Sri Lanka. Not, let me repeat, in terms of GDP per head but in terms of absolute GDP in 2006. About twice the size of Iceland, in economic terms.

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Continue reading “Economics 1.01”

[Dave Birch] This story about bus ticket machines going down Down Under may seem of tangential relevance to identity cards, but look at the details. According to the story, bus ticket machines are breaking down an average of 12 times a day, giving passengers free rides and robbing taxpayers of thousands of dollars in revenue. The figures, revealed in Freedom of Information documents, also cast doubt on the replacement smart card system, which drivers claim breaks down more than the current ticket machines – even causing at least one accident. The real cost of loss in revenue is unknown as the Government relies on the ticket machines to provide patronage and fare data. The biggest cause of ticketing machines being out of order was faulty software, followed by printer malfunctions, and breakdowns in electrical and mechanical components.

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Continue reading “Meanwhile, back in the real world”

[Dave Birch] Karen J. Wendel is the CEO of one of the digital identity companies that we’ve followed for a long time, IdenTrust. In this week’s podcast, Karen talks about communicating the benefits of a PKI-based approach to digital identity and overcoming the barriers to deployment. Before IdenTrust, Karen was the CEO of eFinance Corporation, an applications development company that provides risk and credit decisioning solutions. She was previously a partner at the Belgium-based consulting firm The Capital Markets Company (CAPCO) where she led the growth of CAPCO’s e-finance practice, including raising capital and building out the required team and infrastructure to serve global financial institutions in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Prior to that, Wendel led the U.S. Financial Services Practice of Gemini Consulting. She is the author of numerous industry publications and articles on the subjects of cash management, payments and financial supply chain integration. She has been an advisor to the European Union on emerging technologies for payments and the keynote speaker at major international banking conferences. She has degrees in Economics and International Relations from Brigham Young University.
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Continue reading “Karen Wendel, IdenTrust”

[Dave Birch] In a couple of workshops for clients recently I’ve been using a technology roadmap based on one we originally drew up in connection with a U.K. government project on the future for financial services. As part of that roadmap, I included a couple of examples (it doesn’t matter why) of security-related technologies that seem crazy now, but might come into common use in the future to get people to think how changes in the security landscape might feed through to business investment decisions. One of the examples I use — because it helps to break the ice! — is that of body odour, making the point (which other people have also made) that if I could integrate an odour detector and analyser with the power of a dog’s nose into a chip in my laptop, then my laptop would know who else was in a room with me, because dogs can easily discriminate between different people.

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Continue reading “Going to the dogs”

As a special deal for Digital Identity Forum and Digital Money Forum readers, Digital Identity Management, edited by Dave Birch, is now available direct from the publishers. Gower at a 25% discount. Go to the Gower website to find out more about the book and enter code G07CW to receive the discount at checkout.