With the proliferation of biometric technology such as face, fingerprint, iris and voice recognition, concerns have arisen regarding the vulnerability of our biometric data. How can we safeguard our irreplaceable biometric data, which are intricately linked to our biological identities, from potential compromise?
In the “Handbook of Biometric Template Protection,” we delve into the rapidly evolving world of Biometric Template Protection (BTP), which strives to mitigate the risks associated with the storage and usage of biometric templates (i.e., features that encode our biometric characteristics). This book presents a comprehensive overview of the BTP research field in three main parts.
Firstly, it explores the importance of BTP in light of the dangers posed by compromised templates, the limitations of generic data protection mechanisms, and the need to adhere to privacy regulations. Secondly, it examines a number of different BTP methods, including handcrafted and learned techniques. Lastly, it discusses evaluation metrics used to assess the robustness of BTP methods. Each chapter includes study questions to encourage the reader to reflect on the content and deepen their understanding. Whether you are a newcomer to the BTP field, a seasoned researcher, or a practitioner wishing to deploy BTP in real-world biometrics applications, this book offers valuable insights into BTP’s critical role in safeguarding our identities. You will come away with not only a firm grasp of the fundamental concepts, but with inspiration to further advance biometric template protection to ensure more responsible use of biometric data in practice.
Dr Vedrana Krivokuca Hahn obtained her PhD degree in Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Auckland (New Zealand), on the topic of biometric template protection for fingerprints. She now works as a researcher in the Biometrics Security and Privacy Group at Idiap Research Institute (Switzerland), where she leads research on Biometric Template Protection (BTP), including the development of BTP methods and robust evaluation strategies for practical BTP implementations. Vedrana is currently the chief researcher in the Innosuisse PRiMEAiD project, which aims to apply BTP towards the development of a privacy-preserving face identification system for humanitarian aid distribution programmes. Vedrana also manages projects (both academic and industrial) on different biometrics topics, such as presentation attack detection (e.g., for the EU research project SOTERIA, on secure personal data platforms) and multimodal biometric recognition in vehicles (for an industrial partner). Vedrana is additionally involved in biometric system evaluations for industry and government applications, and is currently part of the EU CERTAIN project on AI system certification. She also engages in teaching activities, including the biometrics course as part of Idiap’s Masters in Artificial Intelligence programme, and public tutorials.
Prof. Marta Gomez-Barrero is Full Professor for machine learning at the Universität der Bundeswehr München since 2023, head of the BioML: Biometrics and Machine Learning research group. She is general chair of the BIOSIG conference and has served for several conferences (e.g., IJCB, IWBF, EUSIPCO, WIFS, ICASSP) and journals (e.g., IEEE TIFS, IEEE TPAMI, IEEE TBIOM, IET BMT, Elsevier PR). Further, she is Deputy Chair of the European Association for Biometrics (EAB), Chair of the BIOSIG special interest group of the Geselllschaft für Informatik (GI), associate editor for the EURASIP Journals on Information Security and on Image and Video Processing, Vice-Chair for Conferences of the IARP TC4 Conference Committee, Member of the IEEE Biometrics Council Security and Privacy Technical Committee, and the IEEE Information and Forensics Technical Committee, and represents the German Institute for Standardisation (DIN) in ISO/IEC SC37 JTC1 SC37 on biometrics. She has also been involved in several international research project (ANR-DFG RESPECT; EU SOTAMD, BEAT, and TABULA RASA; IARPA BATL). Her current research focuses on security and privacy evaluations of biometric systems (PAD, BTP).
Prof. Arun Ross is the Martin J. Vanderploeg Endowed Professor at Michigan State University and the Site Director of the NSF Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR). He conducts research on the topic of biometrics, privacy, computer vision, and deep learning. Prof. Ross has received prestigious awards, including the JK Aggarwal Prize and the Young Biometrics Investigator Award from the International Association of Pattern Recognition. He has advocated for responsible biometrics usage globally, speaking in events such as the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (2018) and testifying before the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee (2013) and the US House Science, Space, and Technology Committee (2018). Prof. Ross is a coauthor of the Springer Handbook of Multibiometrics and the textbook Introduction to Biometrics.
Prof. Sébastien Marcel is a senior researcher at the Idiap Research Institute (Switzerland). He heads the Biometrics Security and Privacy group and conducts research on face recognition, speaker recognition, vein recognition, attack detection (presentation attacks, morphing attacks, deepfakes), and template protection. He is both IEEE Fellow and IAPR Fellow. He is also Professor at the University de Lausanne (UNIL) at the School of Criminal Justice He is also the Director of the Swiss Center for Biometrics Research and Testing, which conducts certifications of biometric products. Prof. Marcel served as an associate editor for prestigious journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Biometrics and Identity Science, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, and IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. He is also the lead editor of the Springer Handbook of Biometrics Anti-Spoofing (Editions 1, 2 and 3).
