Biometrics: Global Demand on the Rise

It allows you to breeze right through the grocery checkout line. It also helps the FBI keep tabs on potential terrorist activity.

Biometrics - the ability to accurately identify people by unique traits and characteristics - has a tremendous range of public and private value, and the technology has been a critical tool to government agencies worldwide for quite some time. Thus, we're not surprised to hear that global demand is increasing.

According to Investor's Business Daily, the demand for biometrics hardware and software is expanding in light of high-level homeland security measures, border control and requirements for other government intelligence operations. The private sector is expanding as well. It looks like biometric technology is recession-proof: the International Biometric Group reports that the global biometrics market is expected to grow from $3.4 billion to $9.4 billion between 2009 and 2014.

Right now, fingerprint scanning is the biometric tool of choice for government agencies – the Department of Homeland Security's database alone holds 90 million sets of fingerprints. That said, global interest in face recognition is up; while fingerprint technology holds first place, face recognition is expected to be the second biggest revenue growth area in the biometrics industry in 2009, followed by iris scanning.