WASHINGTON -- The Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X9, the national standards-setting body for the financial services industry, has issued a new standard for the use of biometric information -- such as fingerprint, iris scan and voiceprint -- in the financial services industry.
The newly-approved standard, "X9.84 Biometric Information Management and Security," defines the requirements for managing and securing biometric information for use in the financial industry, such as for customer identification and employee verification.
The standard also identifies techniques, such as digital signatures and encryption, to provide integrity and maintain privacy of biometric data. Suitable for use by a professional audit practitioner, the standard includes a comprehensive set of control objectives to validate a biometric system.
"Cooperation is the key to any successful standard-setting process," said Cynthia L. Fuller, managing director of X9 standards, noting that the standard was developed in conjunction with other organizations, including the BioAPI Consortium, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory's Common Biometric Exchange File Format (CBEFF) initiative and the International Biometric Industry Association (IBIA).
"The approval of the ANS X9.84 standard is an important step for the biometrics industry. It will be extremely important in accelerating the utilization of highly secure biometric-based financial applications," said Fernando Podio of NIST's Information Technology Laboratory and the co-chair of the Biometric Consortium and the Common Biometric Exchange File Format (CBEFF) development.
