ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 Biometrics is a standardization subcommittee in the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which develops and facilitates standards within the field of biometrics. The international secretariat of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), located in the United States.

History

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 was established in August 2002, after the approval of a proposal submitted by ANSI to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for the establishment of a new JTC 1 subcommittee on biometrics. The main purpose of the new subcommittee was to provide an international venue that would harmonize and accelerate formal international biometric standardization, resulting in better interoperability, reliability, usability, and security for future standards based systems and applications. With better interoperability between biometrics systems, the success of these applications would be much more likely. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 was created with the intent that it would create standards that could support the rapid deployment of open systems, standard-based security solutions for a number of purposes, such as prevention of ID theft and homeland defense. Standards developed by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 provide support to a wide range of systems and applications that provide accurate and reliable verification and identification of individuals. The subcommittee has published a number of standards pertaining to biometrics in the areas of technical interfaces, data interchange formats, performance testing and application profiles. Other topics within biometrics that have already, or are currently, being addressed by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 are performance and conformance testing methodology standards, sample quality standards, and standards and technical reports in support of technical implementation issues and cross jurisdictional issues related to the utilization of biometric technologies in commercial applications.

Scope and mission

The scope of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 is the "Standardization of generic biometric technologies pertaining to human beings to support interoperability and data interchange among applications and systems." Generic human biometric standards include: Common file frameworks Biometric application programming interfaces Biometric data interchange formats Related biometric profiles Application of evaluation criteria to biometric technologies Methodologies for performance testing and reporting and cross jurisdictional and societal aspects

The mission of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 is to ensure a comprehensive and high priority, worldwide approach for the development and approval of international biometric standards.

Work done by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 does not include: Work covered by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 17 for applying biometric technologies to cards and personal identification Work covered by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 for biometric data protections techniques, biometric security testing, evaluations, and evaluations methodologies

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 Roadmap – 12 August 2015

Structure

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 is made up of six working groups (WGs), each of which carries out specific tasks in standards development within the field of biometrics. The focus of each working group is described in the group's terms of reference. Working groups of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 are:

Collaborations

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 works in close collaboration with a number of other JTC 1 subcommittees, specifically ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 17: Cards and Personal Identification, and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27: IT Security Techniques. The standard ISO/IEC 7816-11:2004, Identification cards – Integrated circuit cards – Part 11: Personal verification through biometric methods, developed by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 17 includes an instantiation of a biometric data encapsulator developed by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 has also developed standards with external organizations, such as the International Labour Organization (ILO). External organizations, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), have also adopted many of the standards developed by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37. In 2011, ICAO published the sixth edition of Document 9303 Part 1, which specifies requirements for passports (specifically, Machine-readable passports) within the realms of physical security features, biometrics, and data storage media. Many of the specifications for biometrics developed and facilitated by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 were integrated into the document, specifically those pertaining to face, finger, and iris images.