Call for papers: Standardisation of Biometrics: Current Status and Perspectives

A special issue of International Journal of Biometrics

Biometric technology was traditionally used in law enforcement aligned with forensic activity. However, biometric systems have spread rapidly into a broad variety of fields in recent years. Not only is biometrics considered by governments as an essential security and intelligence tool, but the technology is also used by the private sector to prevent identity fraud and reduce operational costs.

Over a short period of time, different biometric devices with distinct and common features have been developed under various vendor names in broader applications such as access control, border crossings, bank ATMs, video surveillance, IT security and federal employee IDs. As with other emerging technologies that are rapidly developed, adopted and implemented, it is necessary to standardise biometric technology to ensure reliability, interoperability, usability, security and scalability of biometric systems.

Currently, six types of biometric standards are under development under the purview of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 37: biometric vocabulary, technical interfaces, data interchange formats, application profile standards, performance testing and reporting, and cross-jurisdictional and societal aspects. Much effort has been devoted to this development and some of the standards are already established and have been well-received by the industry.

To assist research scientists and engineers in becoming familiar with these standards, we propose a special issue introducing biometric standardisation activities, to include the scope and design of important biometric standards. This issue should be useful to a large audience since it will:

• Introduce published and ongoing significant biometric standards
• Provide a fundamental understanding of the advancement and availability of technical standards for biometrics
• Enable the development of integrated, scalable and robust solutions
• Provide guidance on the best practices in testing biometric devices
• Provide some of the research challenges and solutions arising from the standardisation effort

This issue will explore past and present achievements and future directions in the standardisation of biometrics, which include but are not limited to:

• Standards development procedures and policies
• Standards for biometric terminology, data interchange formats and interoperability amongst different components, databases and/or systems
• Standards in biometric systems' privacy and security
• Security and privacy analysis, and attacks and solutions associated with known biometric data formats
• Testable standards: conformity assessment methodology; performance testing and reporting; biometric data quality measurement

Important Dates
Manuscript due: 1 August, 2011
Notification of acceptance: 1 September, 2011
Revised paper due: 15 October, 2011
Submission of final revised paper: 30 October, 2011