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Neutral industry news and explainers on iris recognition and biometrics.

• How iris recognition actually works

  A near-infrared camera images the iris’ random texture, which is encoded into a compact binary template — not a stored photo — and matched by Hamming distance.

• Iris vs. face vs. fingerprint: where each biometric fits

  The iris carries far more independent detail than a fingerprint or face, yielding very low false-match rates — at the cost of a cooperative, close-range capture.

• ISO/IEC 30107-3 and the science of liveness detection

  The international standard defines how presentation-attack detection — defenses against printed eyes, contact lenses and replay — is tested and reported.

• What the EU AI Act means for biometric identification

  The Act bans some biometric practices outright and classes remote biometric identification as high-risk — while explicitly excluding pure 1:1 verification.

• Iris at scale: inside UNHCR’s biometric identity system

  The UN refugee agency’s tri-modal system — iris, fingerprint and face — had registered nearly 13 million displaced people by the end of 2023.

• Template protection: why a biometric template is not a photo

  Irreversible templates and cancelable biometrics let systems verify identity without storing a reusable image — a cornerstone of privacy-by-design biometrics.

• Why iris cameras use near-infrared light

  Near-infrared imaging reveals iris texture independent of eye color and ambient lighting, which is why it underpins virtually every operational iris system.

• Biometric borders: how airports adopt eye-based checks

  Automated border control increasingly pairs face and iris recognition for fast identification, while standards bodies push for interoperable, auditable systems.