A new association designed to bring the "A" game to identity-thought leadership, the Secure Identity & Biometrics Association (SIBA), debuts today. SIBA was created for vendors, research institutions, nonprofits and individuals. The organization's purpose is to provide proactive education, policy refinement and solutions to the complexities of balancing identity security and protection with national security, public safety, economic strength, privacy and innovation.
These technologies include both biological and behavioral biometrics such as fingerprints, facial and iris recognition, voice identification as well as secure credentials.
Today these technologies make the world more physically and virtually safe, quick, and economically efficient. Benefits include securing borders, enabling individuals without documentation to be brought out of anonymity, catching dangerous criminals and terrorists, reconciling refugees and reuniting families, reducing identity theft, and enabling medical patients increased privacy while reducing fraud in healthcare. For consumers, biometrics provide protection beyond the use of passwords, most tangibly in banking and mobile solutions.
Yet SIBA believes that even greater benefits from these innovations can be realized if we understand better what these technologies are, and are not, and how they truly affect us as individuals, a nation, and as a global community. "With a struggling economy, the opportunity for innovation and economic growth is explosive. The global biometrics market was $7 billion in 2012. By 2020, it is slated to grow to $20 billion. With policies in place that embrace responsible future applications, these technologies can evolve into a core stabilizer for the economy's recovery and future growth," said SIBA founder and CEO, Janice Kephart.
Kephart has garnered success in some of the most difficult environments in Washington, D.C. bringing to SIBA unprecedented leadership and know-how. Ms. Kephart has:
-- supported and drafted identity-related recommendations in the 9/11 Final
Report as a border counsel to the 9/11 Commission and is a key author of
the Commission staff monograph, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel;
-- testified 16 times before Congress on issues including identity
legislation and policy;
-- had two bills pass Congress by unanimous consent and signed into law
including the current federal criminal code for identity theft;
-- spent five years as a think tank national security director;
-- consulted for the Department of Homeland Security on secure credential
law;
-- appeared at conferences, and dozens of appearances on major TV, radio
and print media outlets as both expert and opinion writer;
-- hosted "The Homeland Security Show with Janice Kephart" on
VIPInternetRadio.com which aired for an hour every Monday for a year and
a half, the most listened to show on the station;
-- has been featured by Duke University as one of the most influential
undergraduate alums of the 1980s.
