Biometric Longread List: Everything You Wanted To Know About Biometrics (But Didn’t Know Who To Ask)

If you have some spare time on your hands and are looking for something worthwhile to read, we’re here to help! Biometrics is a field evolving so rapidly that there are always interesting stories beyond algorithms and error rates. 

Dive into our curated Biometric Longread List – a collection of longer articles and books about biometric topics that you will for sure be interested in. We will keep them updated so there’s always something new to learn.

• You might have missed a fascinating Wired story last year about Woody Bledsoe, a guy that invented facial recognition 60 years ago. Along with that, as his wiki now states, he’s rightfully considered one of the founders of AI.
• Our faces are unique and therefore great for identity verification, right? Not so fast, say these researchers (PDF) from Tel Aviv University. They devised a neural network able to produce “master faces” – faces able to pass authentication for a large portion of the population even without access to any user information. They still have to beat the liveness check, though. (An older paper had already made a similar experiment generating master fingerprints.)
• Deepfakes are fast becoming one of the ways of improving traditional social engineering attacks. Last year, this type of basic fraud increased by 820 percent. Here’s an in-depth summary (PDF, presentation is here) of the types of attacks from this year’s Black Hat conference. Biometrics can surely help with them. 
• Do you want to know just how COVID-19 has upended business? Professor Scott Galloway will show you what to expect in the coming years. His book, Post Corona, is full of insights into how the pandemic has accelerated changes that will profoundly alter the way we approach business and services. 
• One of the most-read stories in our inaugural Trust Report is about the Panama registry. It sets the blueprint on how biometrics can make people’s lives easier.