Biometrics Solutions For Authentication Of Travellers Given Thumbs Up By Aviation Organization

ICAO has validated face recognition and recommends it as the best suited biometric method

The 9/11 unfortunate events had strongly motivated border control organisations to automate the border control process, while ensuring secure authentication of travellers.

ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) has validated face recognition and recommends it as the best suited biometric method for this type of application and is setting standards for storing and using biometrics with Machine Readable Travel Documents. Over the last couple of years electronically Machine Readable Travel Documents (e-Passports) have been introduced in over 80 countries around the world and over 250 million e-passports are already available. An e-Passport contains an embedded chip with passport holder's biometric data which allows an automated inspection system to read out the data from the chip and to verify the integrity of the data and the authenticity of the chip.

As part of the trend, electronic identity card (eID) or EIC are government-issued document for online and offline identification. Belgium, Italy as well as other countries are currently issuing EICs which will replace conventional identity cards in most European countries in the future. Apart from online authentication many EICs also give users the option to sign electronic documents with a digital signature. The Republic of China National Identification Card has already issued a 1.3 billion e-ID cards and the Unique Identification Authority of India is already engaged in enrolling and producing hundreds of millions of cards.

AssureTec's world leading document authentication technology combined with Ctrue's face recognition C-Pass solutions provides a synergetic and completely automatic e-ID authentication for the most complex documents throughout the world. Ctrue's successful launch of C-Pass e-Gate at Passenger terminal expo in Brussels last month is a direct result of dramatic interest escalation for automatic authentication of travellers documents, and to supply the demand, AssureTec and Ctrue are teaming up to supply one-stop shop solutions in this field. ePassport market revenues are set to reach nearly $7 billion annually by the end of 2014 with a CAGR of 31.5%.