TWIN - Trusted Versatile Verifiable Identity Next Generation

In the „TWIN“-project concepts and technologies are being studied to support data protection and privacy of citizens when using biometric authentication. Based on existing technology and products from Sagem Orga and other partners, Fraunhofer FOKUS develops prototypes and scenarios to demonstrate and evaluate these dataprotection-friendly biometric authentication methods.

Access control using PIN or password is based on the concept of secret knowledge. This knowledge must be protected from 3rd parties – therefore, must not be easy to guess – and at the same time must not be misremembered.

Asset-based methods are more comfortable. Biometrics can be used easily and with security comparable to PIN or password. However, in most cases it raises concerns about data protection. It needs to be avoided that by comparison of biometric features citizens are being identified against their will or that by this means different personal data sets of one individual are being consolidated.

The prototypes developed within the project integrate biometric hashing, anonymous signatures, and smartcards as highly access-secured storage and processing devices to assure the previously mentioned data protection requirements for biometric authentication.

Objectives:

• Research on Technologies for data-protection friendly biometric authentication
• Development of prototypes for biometric authentication
• Evaluation of technologies and prototypes in different application scenarios: e-government, e-health, and physical access control