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By Col. Senodja Sundiata-Walker, Project Manager, DoD Biometrics
Additional Research by John Higgins, PEO IEW&S Public Affairs
Biometrics is the study of everything physical about a person; from fingerprints to the iris of the human eye to facial structure. These details, their collection and aggregation allow Soldiers to bring intelligence with precision to the battle field, ensuring not only that the right people are captured, but that those who are innocent are released, if not completely left alone.
In 2016, the Project Management Department of Defense Biometrics (PM DoD Biometrics) established the Biometric Interoperability Standards Conformance Office (BISCO) to fill a gap in the DoD Enterprise Identity Management platform that was noted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The BISCO’s primary focus is on providing testing capabilities in support of the DoD acquisition process by allowing anyone to test devices and or software against the Department’s biometric standards, ensuring not only the best technology in Soldier’s hands, but assuring the best infrastructure is there to support that technology.
Additionally, the BISCO provides subject matter expertise and engineering, knowledge, skills and techniques to the enterprise products within the PM DoD Biometrics portfolio, including NATO support.
The BISCO developed a robust test process supporting the DoD Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (EBTS). This test process has been reviewed and accepted by the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC). The BISCO and JITC work together to support the appropriate level of testing and standardized reporting of the results.
The BISCO created an end-to-end virtualized development and test environment to support Science and Technology (S&T) derived development and isolated (sandbox) virtualized computing environments that directly support vendor software and systems testing. This environment is comprised of highly dense computing blades. This computing environment is isolated from all networks to ensure system integrity and security, supporting independent testing of capabilities.
William “Will” Graves, Chief Engineer for Project Manager DoD Biometrics, has been key in ensuring DoD Biometrics programs like BISCO are executed with precision.
“Standardization is absolutely key,” said Graves. “Having the authority over the repository in the Army and the standard was very important. The standard was so old that it has been modified multiple times [by multiple people] to the point that it was no longer a standard. By doing this testing through BISCO, we can ensure adherence to a single standard, no matter what collection device is being used in the field and as long as they adhere to this standard, the DoD Automated Biometrics Identification System will generate a matched set of responses. It really opens our services capabilities to integrate whatever device we would like to use, and as long as there is a standardized output we know that we’ll be getting match results from their biometric collecting.”
The BISCO also supports pilot project testing and development. The BISCO is working on software development for web-based integrated enrollment software, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), 2D/3D facial recognition, biometric activated RFID cards, as well as examination of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS)/Government Off the Shelf (GOTS) technologies for insertion into the products managed by the biometrics enterprise. This includes the assessment and testing of machine learning, multi-modal fusion software from multiple vendors, and streaming video facial recognition that will enable “every camera as a sensor.” Additional initiatives include moving biometric data and transaction management to cloud solutions that will provide greater access and faster response to inquiries that are scalable to support multi domain services. The BISCO has supported Next Generation Biometric Collection Capability (NXGBCC), NAVY Identity Dominance System (IDS), Marine Corp IDS, and multiple vendors’ systems and solutions by reviewing and testing stated performance metrics and EBTS conformance.
“We can help them [the other branches] look at these devices; there are some minimum quality standards for biometrics, but we can check that as well.” said Graves. “It doesn’t matter what device they use: it could be a cell phone or it could be an 80,000 dollar camera. If they can get quality photographs, images of the face, fingerprints or the iris; if the device passes our standards, then we issue a conformance memo – an interoperability certification -from JTIC that makes that device ‘official’. They, in turn, have given us a performance memo so we can do that type of testing.”
One of the projects that the BISCO implemented is the biometrically enabled authentication gateways for access to the PM DoD Biometrics building. Physical access to onsite buildings is now controlled through a network of deployed biometric contactless scanners that act as authentication gateways for access to the building and to sections of the building based on biometric enrollment (finger, face, iris) into a locally resourced and developed web-enabled database.
The BISCO continues to seek out S&T research opportunities that support the PM requirement to provide solutions and capabilities that enable timely and accurate collection, storage, and dissemination of biometric data across the Department of Defense to all their enterprise subscribers.
| Date Taken: | 04.06.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 06.05.2020 09:08 |
| Story ID: | 371512 |
| Location: | FORT BELVOIR, VA, US |
| Web Views: | 282 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, BISCO Works to create Universal Standards Across Branches, by John Higgins, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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