SRI Awarded Biometrics Contract

SRI International, Menlo Park, Calif., has announced it has been awarded a four-year $12.5 million contract by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) National Intelligence Directorate’s Odin Program to research and develop “dynamic biometrics” able to better detect attempts to evade or deceive biometric security systems, such as fingerprint, iris and face scanners. The ability to detect these so-called presentation attacks, which attempt to deceive security systems, addresses a critical weakness in current generation biometric security systems and can significantly expand biometric use cases. SRI International will deliver a prototype Multi-physiological Joint Optimization and Liveness Nuances for Identity Ratification system (MJÖLNIR) to defeat known and unknown presentation attacks.