Biometrics Roundup: Some Good News and Some Very Bad News

This week’s roundup of FindBiometrics’ top stories offers a few upbeat news items, and one piece of very bad news that also understandably attracted a lot of attention from readers.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way. Among the many consequences of the United States’ rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan was that the Taliban, upon seizing the capital city Kabul, acquired biometric identification devices left behind by the US military. It’s a development that appeared to put many Afghans who had worked with the Western-backed government in danger, and that put biometric tech in the spotlight as the media surveyed the ongoing crisis:

Taliban Captures Biometric Devices Left Behind by US Military

The industry has also generated a lot of positive news in recent days. NEC, for example, got to celebrate after once again attaining the top ranking in the 1:N Identification category of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Face Recognition Vendor Test. NEC’s algorithm demonstrated an accuracy rate of 99.78 percent:

NEC Once Again Reaches Top of NIST Leaderboard

And in some positive news for CLEAR as well as society at large, the airport screening and biometric venue access specialist announced a partnership with OpenTable aimed at enabling users to verify their vaccination status when booking reservations on the latter’s platform. It’s a strong signal of CLEAR’s growing interest in the growing vaccine passport space, where it has made pioneering efforts with its Health Pass app:

CLEAR Partners with OpenTable to Promote Use of Vaccine Passports at Restaurants

ForgeRock, meanwhile, got a lot of attention with its announcement of the appointment of Tschudy Smith as its new Chief People Officer. Smith is an accomplished HR executive, having previously served as AOL/Time Warner’s Senior Leader in Human Resources and as Cisco’s SVP of People and Communities:

ForgeRock Looks to Strengthen Workforce with New Chief People Officer

And finally, a number of FindBiometrics visitors this week showed interest in a new episode of the ID Talk Podcast, in which FindBiometrics Founder Peter O’Neill spoke with JJ Baird, the Director of Engineering and Operations for IDEMIA’s NORAM arm:

ID Talk Podcast: Understanding Biometric Security With IDEMIA’s JJ Baird

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Stay tuned to FindBiometrics to keep up to date with the latest biometric innovations. You can also visit our sibling site Mobile ID World to learn more about the world of digital identity.

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August 28, 2021 – by Alex Perala