Biometrics fights cyber crime

Biometrics systems solutions are best suited to fight rapidly growing
cybercrime.This is according to Iona Press Services CEO, Matthew White,
who was speaking at the e-government forum yesterday. The forum is part of
the seventh annual African Computing and Telecommunications Summit, being
held in Sandton from 4 to 7 October.Many company executives are unaware
that the biggest data loss they are likely to suffer happens internally,
he said."Research firm Gartner predicts 60% of security breach incident
costs, incurred by business this year, will be as a result of company
insiders working alone or in conspiracy with outsiders," said White.The
crimes are mostly motivated by financial or political reasons, he
said.Xhead = Easy targets"The chances of an employee getting caught, given
that the current state of protection, are minimal."However, consequences
of intellectual property theft are becoming more severe, which was
highlighted by White's example of a Durban-based company that dismissed
its senior manager and had him charged with intellectual property theft
worth R5.5 million.Furthermore, a sharp rise in cybercrime and other
information breaches last year was reported by the US National Computer
Security Centre, White said."Of the 520 large US corporations such as
government agencies and universities that responded, 64% reported
intrusions, up by 16% in a year and the Internet was the main point of
attack."Intellectual property theft is a worldwide problem, White pointed
out. He also warned that companies should not allow employees to use
internal systems outside of work, as a company may be held liable for
unfairly dismissing an employee found to have abused the company's
system.Xhead = A biometric keyThe civil ID and PC/networked access would
be the leading biometric applications over the next five years, White
said.Biometrics has emerged as a worldwide identification and verification
solution, with large-scale deployments under way in countries including
SA, Malaysia, Chile and the US, he said.A market report revealed that
biometrics revenues attributed to PC/networked access are expected to grow
at a rapid pace over the next two years, White said, driven by the
increased awareness of employee authentication levels at the enterprise
level."Password management is currently a significant cost factor that can
be reduced significantly through the use of biometrics instead of
passwords, with the added benefit of elevating the level of security."
Asked about how easy is it to fake fingerprints, White said: "I've heard
that communications systems company Sagem is currently testing what they
call 'dead finger detection' but I do not see the possibility of anyone
faking a fingerprint."