Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/31502
22 MARKET TRENDS www.securitysystemsnews.com MAY 2011 SECURITY SYSTEMS NEWS USING BIOMETRICS IN THE NATION’S AIRPORTS A Lots of factions aim to influence use, including a committee called RTCA By Matt Wickenheiser fter the Intelligence Reform and Terror Prevention Act of 2004 was passed, government, air travel/infrastructure professionals and the security industry put together a committee to look at the use of biometrics in airports. The goal was to look at controlling access to secure areas, like tarmacs, airfields, bag- gage handling, and air traffic towers, etc. Federal agencies like Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration worked with industry to issue guidance around biometrics for airport access control, through the RTCA committee. RTCA is a private not-for-profit corpo- ration that functions as a federal advisory committee, and was originally organized in 1935 as the “Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics.” Today its recommenda- tions are used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the basis for policy, program, and regulatory decisions and by the private sector as the basis for devel- opment, investment and other business decisions. Guidance around access control includ- ed general perfor- mance standards and procedures for imple- menting, etc. The first iteration of guidance came out in 2009. But the guidance didn’t spur much action toward adoption of biometrics for airport security, said Kathleen Carroll, director of government relations for HID Global Corp., and a member of the committee. The guidance was just that, said Carroll— not a mandate, but a voluntary advisement for airports. Without a push from the federal govern- ment, airports would wait and see, she suggested. As a result, prompted by official requests by the indus- try, the committee decided last September to revisit the 2009 document, and has begun meet- ing this year with an eye toward spurring action and fleshing out details around what’s needed in biometrics and access control. “I think folks came back and said, ‘We’ve got to start thinking how we’ll make this a rule,’” said Carroll. “The TSA is at the table; it’s going to be up to the TSA what happens. The good news is that this document has all of the stakeholders at the table, all given an equal voice.” While industry experts report the use of biometrics is growing at airports across the nation—mainly for access control, but with some other applications popping up—movement at the federal level may push things along. “The way I look at this is if the United States federal government really wants air- ports to be more secure, they are going to have to do something to make this guidance a mandate, make it happen,” opined Carroll. “And they’re going to have to fund it in some way—or support it somehow.” RTCA is one of several factors currently at play that will affect the use of biometrics at airports, said Rob Zivney, a member of the committee and vice president of government and standards at the Identive Group. And all of the factors are influencing each other, or at least are being considered mutually, to a degree, he said. Briefly, the TSA’s Transportation Worker Identification Card (TWIC) program was initially going to be for both airports and seaports, but the program instead was applied only to seaports, said Zivney. The TWIC pilot is wrapping up, and airports are learning from it, said Zivney. In fact, the pilot results are in the process of being published, he said. Airports are looking at a card based on personal iden- tification verification (PIV), said Zivney, like the one in the TWIC program. But PIV doesn’t allow a contactless interface for biometrics, he added, and that’s what airports want. “If the ... government really wants airports to be more secure, they are going to have to do something to make this guidance a mandate, make it happen.” —Kathleen Carroll, HID “They want biomet- rics, and they want a contactless card, and they don’t want people to have to remember a PIN,” said Zivney. Concurrent to all this, said Zivney, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has put out a draft of a new Federal Information Processing Standards paper, or FIPS. The document lays out parameters for a biometric match- own card that would be contactless. The biometrics on the card releases a PIN, and also uses smart-card algorithms to navigate a Public Key Infrastructure, or PKI. “You’ve got a number of stan- William Hall dards all being updated, not necessarily in sequence, but they’re all moving forward on a new way of doing biometrics on a smart card,” said Zivney. William Hall, manager of access control systems at Boston Logan International Airport, said his facility has had biometrics for five years. The tech is nearing the end of the lifecycle, and an upgrade is in the offing, he said. Hall noted that the RTCA recommenda- tions are merely recommendations. In the last iteration, they called for the adoption of minutia-based templates for fingerprints, as opposed to image based. The templates aren’t transferable between systems, he said, and Logan went with an image-based system. “In the short term we’re not planning to do anything about it, in that we’ve already deployed and have a very successful imple- mentation with our biometrics control system,” said Hall. But he’s using the upgrade to explore technologies, and see if there are readers that can read cards from multiple templates. “We’re using it as an opportunity to reexamine all the technologies that are out there,” said Hall. “We don’t want to be pushed into a box—we want it flexible.” The issue highlights how biometrics at airports would ideally work. In a perfect world, pilots with a single biometrics card would be able to access appropriate areas in any airport they visit. The same systems would allow flight crews or baggage clerks to access areas they were cleared for. Even if the basic technology issues around templates are ironed out, airports still need to work out the vetting process for granting access control at different airports. “If you get a card at Atlanta, it wouldn’t mean we automati- cally allow that card to pass,” Hall said. Bill Spence, vice president of trans- action systems at Lumidigm, said he sees slow but steady movement on bio- metrics in airports. “There’s a lot of opportunity, no ques- tion, within the airport environment, and it’s going to continue to grow. Airports and their use are growing, the need to be convenient and fast is growing,” said Spence. “Biometrics can solve that, and they’re reliable.” Kathleen Carroll He pointed to the TWIC pilot as an example, and said it had real ramifications on airports. “While it’s targeted at ports, it’s not a big jump to be able to move into the kinds of settings or similar settings at an airport,” said Spence. “There are efforts going on for a unified card for airports. You have the same problems as with ports—people move around, (and) at airports, even more so.” Spence said he has seen airline’s VIP clubs begin to use biometrics for controlling who can access their lounges in airports. Some airports are beginning to explore the con- cept of using fingerprint ID to board planes, rather than having passengers hang onto the almost anachronistic boarding passes. “Your finger kind of goes along for the ride. It’s a good boarding pass, if you think about it,” said Spence. And, said Spence, he saw real opportunity to use biometrics in immigrations and cus- toms areas of airports, to help move people quicker through lines and maximize the use of limited space. He noted that the biometrics industry has really focused on getting the price point down on technology. But he says many systems still have an error rate of between 3 and 5 percent. If that’s in a system with a few hundred users, that’s one thing. “What’s happened is because the cost has come down, people see the technology, (and) want to implement it in larger and larger projects,” said Spence. “But if the error rate hasn’t gone down, that doesn’t work.” An error rate of 3 percent in a system used by hundreds of thousands of people would be unacceptable, he said. Jennifer Toscano, of Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, said that beyond basic access control, her company is seeing airports and airlines use biometrics in time and attendance applications. “That’s one of our fastest-growing areas,” she said. She said airports are most interested in systems that are scal- able. They may put in access control bio- metrics in one area, and then start grow- ing it out as budget allows, or as security needs change. SSN Bill Spence