Researchers today are forecasting that spending on biometrics worldwide will more than double over the next five years, from nearly $3 billion in 2008 to $7.3 billion in 2013.

 

According to officials from London-based ABI Research (News - Alert), broad interest and investment in a variety of the technologies – particularly after security concerns emerged in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – will fuel the growth.

 

“Over the next five years the effort to create standards for biometrics technologies will be rewarded with a significant growth in biometrics system adoption,” said Jonathan Collins, a principal analyst at the research firm.

 

Generally speaking, biometrics offer a way to automate the recognition of a person’s identity based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic.

 

Security has become more important in both the public and private sectors, the firm says, but the robust growth that ABI is calling for will be spurred by new technology standards that have enabled more interoperable systems to emerge.

 

“Face, iris, hand, and speech recognition systems have emerged and are being adopted independently and alongside fingerprints, which will continue be the dominant biometric measurement for some time to come,” ABI officials say. “Nevertheless, it will be increasingly essential for organizations and companies, as they secure their facilities, equipment, and data, to understand the potential of each of these technologies as well as the potential to combine them to drive system efficiency and reliability.”

 

According to one company – Intervoice (News - Alert), an international company with offices in Dallas that delivers personalized, multi-channel automated information solutions that connect people with information, empowering them to control the way they interact with a business – an essential and developing component of biometrics is so-called “IVR,” or interactive voice response.

 

Company officials say the telephony technologies, in which someone uses a touch-tone telephone to interact with a database, remain vulnerable to identity theft, because traditional methods of identifying callers aren’t secure.

 

To address the threat, officials from Intervoice are co-sponsoring a free Webinar – register here – to be held at 2 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, July 29, called “The Next Frontier in Customer Identity Protection: Voice Biometrics.”

 

According to ABI’s study, simply titled “Biometrics,” there’s growing interest in biometrics as means of gaining convenience, simplicity and speed in the transactions of daily life.

 

“Biometrics is being offered in laptops and mobile phones – to secure but also speed and simplify log-in – while ‘registered traveler’ applications are emerging to speed passengers through airports,” the firm says. “Biometrics will increasingly move from being the traditional preserve of large-scale public sector systems to adoption in small-scale private sector and even personal systems use.”