Systems integrator Unisys predicts that biometric technology will have a key role in authenticating users for e-commerce and e-government.
But biometric technologies, which identify users from their unique physical characteristics, need to be integrated with digital certificate and smartcard technologies to fully secure transactions, said John Souder, head of personal identification technologies at Unisys.
Public key infrastructure encryption and smartcard defences on their own will be breached, but combined with biometrics they can offer very high security, he said. The major barrier to biometric take-up remains that people associate it with an Orwellian state, said Unisys.
Souder said that public-private partnerships would be key to the future of personal authorisation technologies. He added that systems such as Microsoft's Passport online authentication service and that of the Liberty Group were complementary, not competing technologies.
