BIO-key granted patent to secure biometric enrollments from unauthorized use

BIO-key announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has approved the issuance of a patent for the company’s “Match Template Protection within a Biometric Security System” method.

The benefits of the technology protected by this patent (patent number 7,454,624) provide another layer of defense against hackers and system attacks. Specifically, the technology provides the ability to distinguish an enrollment template from an authentication model.

In the event an attacker is able to extract enrollment templates from a database, if they are submitted as authentication models, BIO-key’s software can detect that these templates were generated as enrollment and not authentication models, rendering them useless. Malicious attacks on security databases are inevitable.

Unlike other approaches that are being investigated for enrollment database security, such as revocation and encryption, BIO-key takes a proactive approach to ensuring greater security. The solution protected under this recently issued patent limits the scope of enrollment templates usage and also eliminates the need for revocation or encryption processes, which can be expensive and time consuming.