Commercial sector waiting for trickle down, say Biometric Consortium Conference attendees
By Steve Lasky
Tampa, Fla. -- When it came to ensuring security and continuity of federal agency and military credentials, the HSPD-12 and FIPS 201 initiatives created a template for a government policy that could help the commercial sector reap big benefits.
More than a year old, the government's de facto secure ID badging mandate has standardized credentials throughout most government agencies and proved to be an economic windfall for several vendors in the secure badge and printer space. Now some commercial markets are seeing a trickle down affecting their own space. Banking and financial organizations, as well as some critical infrastructure operations have begun to adopt the government model as their own.
And now that President Bush has asked federal agencies to coordinate the use of biometrics for the purpose of tracking and identifying potential security risks, some in the fragmented biometrics industry are hoping for similar payback.