Into the unknown

Biometrics is the final frontier for fraud protection. But as financial institutions consider biometric security solutions, are they adequately assessing the risks? David Benyon finds out

Biometrics sounds sophisticated - sexy even. It has stirred the public imagination in Hollywood blockbusters such as Mission Impossible and Minority Report. Real-life financial criminals seldom use human eyeballs to fool biometric security - and a retinal scanner is not standard on most sunglasses - but biometric technologies do have a growing role in the financial security industry.

However, aside from physical applications such as entry to restricted areas and 'soft' biometrics such as the use