Patricia Wolfhope joined the biometrics industry after her then 7-year-old daughter was almost abducted. At that time she was working at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and was shocked that law enforcement wasn’t taking advantage of the different technologies available to catch perpetrators.

Iris ID has completed a new installation of its iris recognition solution at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and hometo the Large Hadron Collider. Iris ID installed the first batch of its iris recognition solutions at CERN in 2008. The latest installation brings the total number of Iris ID devices at CERN to 80, and all have been upgraded to the latest generation.

When we think about innovative industries, traditional financial institutions may not be front of mind. Instead the industry has developed a public reputation for stability and consistency. Yet many banks have been showing a different attitude when it comes to security.

Celeste Thomasson’s first major involvement with biometrics came about five years ago while she was general counsel for international technology group SAFRAN, playing a role in the acquisition of L-1 but her interest in biometrics emerged as a science back in the early 2000s.

Morpho announced that the FBI has certified the MorphoWave Desktop contactless fingerprint scanner; Global government biometrics spending is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22.34% between 2014-2019; EyeVerify ended 2015 with 2 million unique enrolled devices.

The Federal Trade Commission approved facial recognition as a way for companies to obtain verified parental consent under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The method was proposed by London-based Riyo Verified, an identity and age verification company creates trust and regulatory compliance online by turning a smartphone or webcam into an ID scanning terminal that matches an ID holder to an identity document.

Data breaches are common and even a risk-based, multi-layered defense isn’t perfect. The problem with protecting data will be more of an issues as an increasing number of devices come online with the IoT. Biometrics will play an important role in securing all this data in the future with this new identity ecosystem.

Cathy Tilton has been in the biometrics industry for more than 20 years, though she’s always worked in non-traditional fields. One of the leaders behind many biometrics standards she started in biometrics in the 90s and is now at CSC.