Stories about: Biometric Identification

The Australian government is moving towards greater use of biometrics to prevent identity theft which costs $1.1 billion annually, the federal Attorney General Philip Ruddock said today.

Protecting data is not just a job for technologists. It also takes physical security and business continuity experts.

Security will be a major focus this week at the giant Cebit show in Hanover, Germany. This year, the annual IT trade show will hone in on the multiple layers of security threats facing enterprise networks. Now it's not just data networks that are under attack; VoIP and even paper documents are at risk.

Australia's big four banks are a house divided over the introduction of biometrics identifiers to control fraud, with the National Australia Bank pouring cold water on the introduction of fingerprint identification for its customers.

People and passwords -- in the long run, they just don't work very effectively together. At least that's what Phil Fowler, vice president of IT at Telesis Community Credit Union, a financial services provider that manages $US1.2 billion in assets, found out. His team ran a network password cracker as part of an enterprise security audit last year to see if employees were adhering to Telesis' password policies. They weren't.

Hackers and phishers are preventing e-commerce and e-government from reaching their full potential, according to a former special advisor to the US president on cybersecurity.

While the Australian Government pushes ahead with its efforts to develop biometric technology to combat identity fraud at Australia's borders, doubts remain about the practicability of the technology.