OASIS Begins New Effort to Define Biometrics Standards for Interoperability

3M HIS, Booz Allen Hamilton, U.S. National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST), U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Others
to Advance Biometrics Use in Distributed Environments

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The OASIS international open standards consortium has launched its new Biometrics Technical Committee, with support from government agencies, companies, and universities from around the world. The OASIS Biometrics Technical Committee will create standards that improve interoperability in distributed environments, making biometrics more viable within multi-factor authentication.

“As an industry leader in biometrics, 3M Cogent is proud to be a founding member of the OASIS Biometrics Technical Committee. We appreciate the opportunity to help further the applications for biometrics technologies in the global information society.”

“It’s time for biometrics to be on par with other security technologies, where interoperability standards are markedly more mature,” said Kevin Mangold of NIST, chair of the OASIS Biometrics Technical Committee.

An initial contribution to the new OASIS Biometrics Technical Committee will be the NIST Specification for WS-Biometric Devices (WS-BD), which defines a REST-based framework for deploying and invoking core synchronous operations via lightweight Web service protocols for the command and control of biometric sensors. Other deliverables are expected to be developed as the Committee members identify requirements for new standards.

The OASIS Committee intends to align its activities with other biometrics standardization initiatives underway, with the goal of supporting harmonized vocabularies, avoiding duplication of effort, and promoting interoperability of biometric data exchange and machine processing.

New members are encouraged to join the OASIS Biometrics Technical Committee at any time. Archives of the work are accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS invites public review and comment on the work.

Support for OASIS Biometrics
3M Cogent
"As an industry leader in biometrics, 3M Cogent is proud to be a founding member of the OASIS Biometrics Technical Committee. We appreciate the opportunity to help further the applications for biometrics technologies in the global information society."
--Matthew Pepe, Business Director, 3M Identity Management

U.S. Department of Defense
"The OASIS Biometrics Technical Committee provides a forum for the Department of Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency (DFBA) to accelerate the development of voluntary consensus based biometric standards, in lieu of government-unique standards, to enhance interoperability between the DoD's Joint, Interagency, International, and Multinational partners.”
-- John M. Manson, Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency, Programs Division Chief

U.S. NIST
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a broad uptake in the use of Web services across the biometrics industry. NIST is excited to see broad participation in efforts to standardize these critical system interfaces in an interoperable manner.”
-- Ross J. Micheals, PhD, Supervisory Computer Scientist

Additional information
OASIS Biometrics Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/biometrics/

About OASIS:
OASIS is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. OASIS promotes industry consensus and produces worldwide standards for security, privacy, cloud computing, content technologies, business transactions, energy, emergency management, and other areas. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice of technology. OASIS members broadly represent the marketplace of public and private sector technology leaders, users, and influencers. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.
http://www.oasis-open.org