The main motivation of biometrics standards is to define requirements, formats and sofware specification enabling interoperability between biometric systems, especially authentication systems.
Biometric standarts enable levels of interoperability. High level standards enable interoperability of data collections and storage processes. Low level standards enable interoperability of signal processing and matching technologies.
Biometric standards have been developed by informal and formal standards organizations and frequently they are differs from one to another. Currently there exists a great maturity and consensus and definitive standards documents have been released.
Many of the biometric standards have been finally established as formal standards by organizations.
ISO (International Standard Organization) is the most important international standard organization. Usually, the standards documents adopted by ISO are published after a long, public and carefull process of international consensus. The biometric ISO standard documents have been defined and published in conjunction with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
X9 is the United States Technical Advisory Group formed by several subcommittees and particularly X9F subcommmitee is focused on Information and Data Security. The X9F working group X9F4 deals with Application Security and developed the American National Standard x9.84-2001, Biometric Information Management and Security. This standard was synchonized with another standards as BioApi? and CBEFF developed by other organizations.
Fingerprint images for criminal identification have been widely used by agencies and criminal polices around the world. The introduction of Automatic Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) by those agencies created the needs for standard formats for interoperability and information exchange among subsystems or AFIS geographically spread.
Since 1986 ANSI, NIST and FBI developed the standard ANSI/NIST-ITL for exchange and interoperability among diferent components or databases of the unique FBI AFIS system. That standard defined requirements and format for images and templates of fingerprint and face and also includes diferent types of request for biometric researching in databases. That format was adopted also by Interpol and criminal policies and agencies of several countries (Brasil included).
ISO (International Standard Organization) established a Joint Technical Committee (JTC1) with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to address Information Technology standards. JTC1 has several subcommittees and particularly three of them are realted with biometrics standards.
In 1999 a workshop sporsored by NIST and Biometric Consortium looked for an industry consensual format for fingerprints templates. As result the participants identified the need of an unique open format for biometrics independent of technology and type of biometrics. This format could facilitate the interchange and interoperability of biometric data. As result the Common Biometric Exchange File Format (CBEFF) was created.
CBEFF defines a generic common set of data needed for support different biometric technologies. It describes a set of required and optional fields and a domain of use to establish the applicability of an standard that meets CBEFF requiments. At the same time CBEFF establish the process by which new process and technologies can create new formats that meets that requirements. CBEFF in fact, defines a generic standard used by organizations and vendors to define new standards.
The standard x9.84-2001 developed by X9 Committee was synchonized with the BioApi? Specification.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) leads several efforts to create standards for traveling documents. Those standards define (1) photographic, scene and digital requirements for facial and fingerprints images and (b) formats for store images and their features for interchange purposes. The ICAO standards are based on CBEFF especifications for biometric information.
The ICAO proposal for electronic passport (e-passport) format called LDS must become the ISO/IEC standard for electronic passport.
BioApi Consortium is an informal standard organization created to develop a common Application Programming Interface (API) available and accepted by biometric vendors and researchers. A common API would be very usefull because biometric application could be implemented independently of biometric technology used. An application system using BioApi in its implementatiom could replace a biometric SDK to another from a different vendor without code changes.
The standard x9.84-2001 developed by X9 Committee was synchonized with the BioApi Specification.
It is expected in the future that more and more biometric technology vendors adopt BioApi? as application interfaces for their SDKs