New Biometric Information Standard Issued for Financial Industry

A newly issued standard for Biometric Information Management and Security (X9.84), for use in the financial services industry, has been published by the Accredicated Standards Committee (ASC).

The standard covers requirements for managing and securing biometric information -- fingerprint, iriscan, voiceprint, etc. -- for use in customer identification and employee verification.

The standard also identifies techniques ( digital signatures and encryption) to provide integrity and privacy of biometric data. Suitable for use by a professional audit practitioner, the standard includes a comprehensive set of control objectives to validate a biometric system.

"The X9.84 standard provides a solid set of guidelines for the secure implementation of biometrics within financial transaction enviroments," said Catherine Tilton, director of special projects at SAFLINK Corporation.

"The approval of the ANS X9.84 standard is an important step for the biometrics industry. It will be extremely important in accelerating the utilization of highly secure biometric financial applications," said Fernando Podio of NIST's Information Technology Laboratory and the co-chair of the Biometric Consortium and the Common Biometric Exchange File Format (CBEFF) development.

The standard was developed in conjunction with other organizations, including the BioAPI Consortium, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory's Common Biometric Exchange File Format (CBEFF) initiative and the International Biometric Industry Association (IBIA).

For more information on this and other ASC X9 standards, visit the X9 website at http://www.x9.org

First published on Bankersonline, 3/26/01

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