Editorial: Why is Biometric Testing So Difficult?

I don’t know whether, like me, you saw a latex face mask staring back at you from a display cabinet at Identity Week Europe, Amsterdam? I had to explore further.

The cabinet was on the Ingenium Biometrics booth, an independent testing and research lab in the field of ID and secure documents. I got talking to the co- founder, Chris Allgrove, who explained that the masks are used to replicate real-world presentation attacks, so that biometric algorithms can be trained and tested to better detect spoofing attempts. This opened up a much wider discussion about measurement and testing of biometrics, and in particular whether the testing regimes for biometrics and digital identities match the well-established performance standards for physical documents.