January MeetUp: Addressing Security, Privacy & Identity with Biometrics

We thank WPI for again hosting our monthly MeetUp. Our evening will begin with a quick presentation by Michael Ahern of WPI, who will welcome us and share a very brief overview of their new Fintech graduate certificate program.

For our main presentation: the use of biometrics for identification and authentication is driving significant advances in security, but as more organizations deploy biometric systems, security and privacy concerns are also rising. These concerns are real because biometric unique, linkage to a person makes them highly valuable data to hackers. Hackers who steal, replicate or modify biometric identifiers can cause serious harm to organizations and individuals since the biometric identifiers of an individual cannot be easily “reset” like passwords.

In this talk, Dr. Asem Othman, Team Lead of Biometric Science at the firm Veridium demonstrates different biometric identifiers (face, voice, fingerprint, iris, and 4 Fingers) in action while detailing their level of accuracy and usability. Also, we will cover the privacy and security concerns associated with each of these identifiers and discuss the best practices for protecting people’s privacy and their biometrics. Finally, Dr. Othman will explore the evolution of identity management in the era of the blockchain, introducing the idea of Bring Your Own Identity (BYOID) and self-sovereign identity, and the need for strong authentication using biometrics as part of this innovation.