Talk: Is your Biometric Data Safe by Alex Kot

On behalf of the Centre of Signal and Image Processing (CISIP), Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, you are cordially invited to attend an invited seminar by Prof. Alex Kot, National Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Venue: Floor 8, Wisma RnD, University of Malaya (Google Map)

Date: 20th September 2012 (Thursday)  21st September 2012 (Friday)

Time:1000 - 1200
* Light refreshment will be provided.

Title: Is your biometrics data safe?

Abstract:

Nowadays, biometrics is widely used in authentication systems. In general, biometrics needs to be stored in a database for subsequent authentication. However, templates stored in the database are at the risk of being stolen or modified. Once the template is stolen, it is difficult to be replaced like passwords and the private user information associated with the stolen template would also be exposed. Thus, biometrics templates should be stored in the database such that both the security of the template and the privacy of the user are not compromised under various attacks.

This talk will cover some existing techniques in dealing with biometrics data protection. A novel data hiding scheme is proposed for the thinned fingerprint template. Another new scheme is proposed to reconstruct a full fingerprint image from the minutiae points. The analysis shows that our proposed technique is useful for protecting the fingerprint ridge frequency. We also propose a novel system for protecting the privacy of the fingerprint minutiae without using a token or key.

Biography

Dr Kot has been with the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore since 1991. He headed the Division of Information Engineering at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering for eight years until 2005. He started serving as Vice-Dean (Research) for the School of EEE in 2005 and became Associate Dean for the College of Engineering in 2008. He is currently a Professor at the School of EEE and Associate Dean for the College of Engineering. He has published extensively with over 200 technical papers and 3 patents in the areas of signal processing for communication, biometrics recognition, data-hiding, authentication and media forensics. 

Dr. Kot served as Associate Editor for the IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, IEEE Trans. on Multimedia, IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology; and IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems Part II as well as Part I. He is currently Associate Editor for the IEEE Trans. on Information, Forensics and Security, IEEE Trans. on Image Processing and IEEE Signal Processing Letter. He is also Editor for the EURASIP Journal of Advanced Signal Processing, the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine and the IEEE Journal of the Special Topics in Signal Processing. He has served as the General Co-Chair for the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) and Chair of the worldwide SPS Chapter Chairs and the Distinguished Lecturer program. He serves as IEEE Fellow Evaluation Committee. He received the Best Teacher of the Year Award and is a co-author for several Best Paper Awards including ICPR, WIFS and IWDW. He was the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in 2005 and 2006 and is a Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of Academy of Engineering, Singapore and Vice President-elect for IEEE Signal Processing Society.