New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the global biometrics market earned revenues of $1.48 billion in 2012 and projects this to reach $6.15 billion in 2019. “Better end user recognition of the unique capabilities of biometric technologies has helped vendors win a number of projects and contracts,” explained Frost & Sullivan’s senior research analyst Ram Ravi.
![Crime is falling]()
Welcoming new quarterly crime statistics for the year to June 2013, crime prevention minister Norman Baker has stated: “Recorded crime has dropped yet again by more than 10 per cent under the coalition Government, and the crime survey says that crime has more than halved since its peak in 1995.”
Mathematicians, code breakers, and ethical hackers have spent the last month attempting to break a series of codes hidden across the Internet. GCHQ’s “Can You Find It?” competition has seen “a phenomenal uptake” since its launch on 11 September, with more than 400,000 visits to the competition site. To date, only around 1 percent of visitors have been able to crack the complex codes created by a GCHQ team of top mathematicians.
Logistics consultant Tom Temple is this year’s recipient of the Sheriffs’ Award, which is bestowed by The Worshipful Company of Security Professionals on behalf of the Sheriffs of the City of London. On 3 November 2012, Tom apprehended an individual who threatened a taxi driver with a hand gun, pinning the man to the ground until the police arrived.
Big Brother Watch has commented on the Intelligence and Security Committee’s plans to broaden its investigation into whether the laws on digital surveillance and communications are adequate in the Internet age. Big Borther Watch said:
This is a welcome step forward given the widespread concern that Britain’s surveillance laws are not fit for purpose, having been written before Facebook existed and when few people had Internet access.
However, such a debate cannot be allowed to take place behind closed doors and without pressing questions being asked about the legal justification for what we know to be already happening at GCHQ and elsewhere.
The Security Industry Authority is holding its 2013 Stakeholder Conference on Wednesday 20 November. The Partners in Protecting Society event is to be held at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London and includes presentations on serious and organized crime, and the private investigations sector.
ACPO president Sir Hugh Orde has spoken to Radio 4’s Today programme on the subject of police integrity. Sir Hugh said that public confidence in policing has been “remarkably stable in the last five to ten years because of 130,000 officers embedded in local policing and delivering a good service.”
The Government’s security classifications are to be fundamentally overhauled for the first time since World War II. The shakeup sees the six existing levels of protective marking replaced with just three: Official, Secret, and Top Secret. From next April, these new markings will be used by more than 700,000 civil servants and military personnel.
As fast as big-data tools and techniques improve, fraudsters are still keeping one step ahead and managing to illicitly obtain corporate information and funds, warns KPMG. To counter the threat, KPMG’s Eddie Short is calling on companies to move towards a more analytical workforce. Doing so, he argues, will make it easier to spot the anomalies which can often indicate fraud or improper conduct.
The BSIA has announced the speaker lineup for its South East Business Crime Conference, which takes place at Brighton and Hove Albion FC on Wednesday 30 October. Presenters include Katy Bourne, PCC for Sussex; Roy Smith of the Met Police; and PRCI director Professor Martin Gill.
Free Download: The Video Surveillance Report 2023
Discover the latest developments in the rapidly-evolving video surveillance sector by downloading the 2023 Video Surveillance Report. Over 500 responses to our survey, which come from integrators to consultants and heads of security, inform our analysis of the latest trends including AI, the state of the video surveillance market, uptake of the cloud, and the wider economic and geopolitical events impacting the sector!
Download for FREE to discover top industry insight around the latest innovations in video surveillance systems.
I wonder where those numbers for biometrics growth come from. For years I’ve been hearing that biometrics are right around th coner that htey are the next big thing and that reliabiltiy is good enough for every day use. I still haven’t seen it. Even the trendy new iPhone I’m seeing people disabling the finger print lock because it annoys them.
It’s funny isn’t it, and these market predictions always seem to indicate phenomenal growth that I just don’t see.
Yes they do and we’ve been seeing them for a couple decades now. It’s always right around the corner and it’s going to be the next big thing. It’s a great system on paper but I think too many people forget about the human factor. One quick example, I had a guy bring me his brand new computer because he was locked out. He bought it the night before and set it up for facial recognition, played with it that night then shut it down. The next morning it wouldn’t unlock. He went on and on about how cool it sounded when… Read more »
I mean the problem there is pretty self-evident, right? Biometrics is fine for something like that but there has to be a usable backup in case of failure. I’ve been at seminars recently explaining that actually voice recognition is the best form of biometric identification when it comes to accuracy.
“voice recognition is the best form of biometric identification when it comes to accuracy.” I almost fell out of my chair when I read that. Hopefully the strides they’ve made in the past 10 years so have ben gigantic. 15 years or so ago I had a phone vendor offer to “give” me a voice print recognition system to secure my datacenter. It was a sales/demo deal for them, they could tell people that we had one and I agreed that they could bring people by periodically to see it working. The system lasted 3 months before one of… Read more »
I know, I was shocked too. Still need to write it all up, but when it comes to fraud, is more what I meant. It’s almost impossible to fake a voiceprint, but a fingerprint or retinal scan is more possible.
OK that much I do believe as it was hard for people to get their own voice print right in some cases. The problem becomes that you start to feel like you’re borderline insane speaking a passcode into a phone. To keep people from having to think too much we used our names and phone extension because the passcode had a minimum length and we didn’t want anyone using information that might be part of a password or ID number. Even then it become difficult to get a match sometimes especially if you were stressed or in a hurry. There were many… Read more »