Biometrics comes to the fore

The aviation industry must face increasingly stringent security demands against a background of rising demand for air travel as the 21st century progresses. Airlines, airport operators, civil aviation authorities and equipment manufacturers are seeking to enhance critical infrastructure security while maintaining profitability and coping with rising demand.

"Today's threats were never considered," Tom Bonsaint, homeland security manager at Raytheon Network Systems, told the Govnet Homeland and Border Security 2007 conference in London in July 2007. "Many airports are 10-25 years in age. All were designed for passenger convenience and airport operations under safe conditions."

In order to meet modern airport security demands, Bonsaint continued, "just hiring more people is not the answer. Making changes today requires significant investments".

To this end, a number of biometric security trials have been introduced in recent years, one of the most recent being the IATA MiSense access control pilot at London Heathrow Terminal 3 from October 2006 to February 2007. Having enrolled in MiSense himself, Liam Byrne, then UK minister for immigration, said: "Biometric ID systems are fundamental to securing our borders in a more mobile age. They are crucial to our plans for counting everyone in and out of the country."

Analysis from UK airport operator BAA and the UK Border & Immigration Agency suggests that technology tested under MiSense is sophisticated enough to be more widely integrated.

Their evaluation report also finds that MiSense was rated as good or excellent by 81 per cent of participants and 89 per cent said they would probably or definitely recommend the scheme to fellow travellers.

It adds that the trial also "demonstrated [that] biometric technology is now developed and sophisticated enough to begin to be integrated into everyday travel journeys".

Image: The MiSense biometric access control trial ran at London Heathrow Terminal 3 between October 2006 and February 2007 (BAA) 285 of 1,156 words